Gestalt

The gestalt school of psychology, which came to prominence in Germany and Austria between World Wars I and II, uncovered insights into perceptual behavior that have proven to be of enduring and wide-ranging influence. Although primarily concerned with visual perception, its [Page 510]proponents also explored the extent to which its principles could be applied to auditory and musical perception, and in so doing laid the ground for subsequent models and advances in understanding of such aspects of musical listening as grouping behavior and the forming of expectations.

History

The principles of gestalt psychology were developed in a series of publications of the 1920s and 1930s, notably those of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka. Although informed by experimental evidence, these writings are generally characterized by an introspective approach and an informal, discursive presentational format.

Their fundamental theme was the way in which the mind organizes a perceptual field in terms of gestalts—forms or wholes, perceived in their entirety, which constitute at once divisions of the overall field and groupings of individual elements within it. Gestalts inform (and speed up) the perception of their constituent elements, and may have properties that these elements do not: in Figure 1A, for instance, the individual objects are not rectangular, but the shape they make is.

Figure 1A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H

The gestaltists set out a series of laws governing the ways in which they believed these forms or groups to arise. According to a concept they labeled prägnanz, the mind always strives to achieve the best-formed gestalts possible, with this being determined by the extent to which elements within groups exhibit properties such as proximity and similarity to one another. The presence of these qualities also allows the perceiver to distinguish figure (which exhibits them) from ground (which does not).

Gestalt psychology seeks to describe perceptual behavior that takes place more or less automatically, making use of universal abilities that emerge at a very early age and appear to require no specific training. It seems likely that these have developed as an evolutionary necessity, enabling humans to quickly organize the stimuli present in a natural environment into patterns that allow conclusions to be drawn about the probable number, position, and nature of the other objects and organisms it contains.