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Why Did Their Precursors Fail and the Gestalt Psychologists Succeed ? Reflections on Theories and Theorists

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Why Did Their Precursors Fail and the Gestalt Psychologists Succeed ? Reflections on Theories and Theorists WHY DID THEIR PRECURSORS FAIL AND THE GESTALT PSYCHOLOGISTS SUCCEED ? REFLECTIONS ON THEORIES AND THEORISTS HARRY KELSON *- University oj Massachusetts HOSE who experienced the first two and a and this in itself marked a new departure in ex- half decades of the Gcstalt movement and perimental psychology. Tfollowed its various developments will re- They did not carry their theory lightly, nor did member the excitement and enthusiasm it engen- they regard the theories of others lightly. They dered. More than any other movement in experi- showed us we must take fundamental assumptions mental psychology it appeared like a bright meteor as seriously as we do experimentally established lighting up the otherwise dim sky of perceptual facts or highly sophisticated statistical treatments. theory. In a paper prepared for delivery before Theories do make a difference, and here I am re- the APA but which was not read because of his minded of an illustration given by Whitehead in death, KShler 2 referred to the excitement and en- this connection: Just as slight turns in the tracks thusiasm among the early Gestalt group, and this in a railroad yard determine whether one goes spirit was certainly communicated to many of us north, east, south, or west, so even small differences before we met and heard him and Wertheimer, in theory may have important consequences on Koffka, and Lewin in person. Yet it was not an where one finally comes out in scientific work. altogether easy point of view for non-Germans to The title of this talk has imposed a rather dif- understand, because it was deeply rooted in Ger- ficult task on me, even though I chose it. For man tradition, or rather traditions. some have denied that Gestalt psychology was suc- There was the tradition of adopting an explicit cessful, and others have found much of value in its point of view'—usually that of the Ordinary Pro- precursors. Indeed, Kohler (19S9) in his presi- fessor or Geheimrat; the tradition of working in the dential address to the APA felt that Gestalt psy- framework of specific hypotheses whose proof or chologists had exerted little influence on American disproof was more important than particular facts psychologists working either in perception or learn- or statistical significance. And there was the ing theory. Perhaps he was too pessimistic in this tradition of batting ideas around along with the conclusion, but we must grant right at the beginning discussions of experimental results. that terms like success and failure are relative, Contrast German interest in theory with Titch- never absolutes. Of course, Gestalt was not a ener's response to Dallenbach when the latter complete success, nor were its precursors or rivals asked him what color theory he believed in and complete failures. Without Mach, Husserl, and Titchener replied: "Why, I believe in none of von Ehrenfels, it is doubtful if there would have them. Facts are all important. Carry your theories been Gestalt as we know it. At least to that ex- lightly | Dallenbach, 1953 ]." The Gestalt psy- tent their precursors were extraordinarily success- chologists were concerned with concepts, ideas, and ful, and if it had not been for the dualistic views of assumptions underlying the interpretation of data, the Meinong-Eenussi school, we would not see and 1 appreciate the importance of the monistic views of Invited paper presented at the meeting of the American Wertheimer and Kohler. Psychological Association to the Division of the History of Psychology, San Francisco, September 1968. With a few We come close here to the influence of the exceptions only more recent publicalions are listed in the Zeitgeist, the general climate of opinion, as Boring references, as the older, historical literature is fully docu- (1950, 1955) defined and emphasized it in many mented in Kelson (1925, 1926). publications on the subject of "great men and scien- Requests for reprints should be sent to Harry Helson, De- partment of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Am- tific progress." As he pointed out, the Zeitgeist herst, Massachusetts 01002. has both good and bad effects, but most great ad- 2 W. Kohler, personal communication, 1967. vances are made by combating it even though it 1006 REFLECTIONS ON THEORIES AND THEORISTS 1007 may provide the matrix out of which creativity and sary and sufficient conditions of several types of discovery emerge to advance knowledge. apparent movement: alpha, beta, gamma, and delta Going further, Boring denies that there are huge movement as well as the case in which no movement leaps in scientific knowledge because all ideas can is perceived from really moving objects (cf. strob- be traced to previous concepts, but here I think he oscopic effects). underestimated the importance of even slight differ- Their position was buttressed with beautiful new ences in emphasis or nuance, in effects of context, experiments and demonstrations, without which in the predominance of a concept within a thinker's they would have been merely another group of arm- outlook. Yes, James and von Ehrenfels did speak chair theorists. of whole qualities, but with Wertheimer the concept The revolutionary position of the Gestalt psy- of wholeness was central in his thinking, not just chologists was in some ways more extreme than one among many other ideas. The importance of that of John B. Watson and the early behaviorists. wholeness is not as apparent in any of Wertheimer's While these workers dispensed with experiential or predecessors or contemporaries, who invoked a conscious data, they did not deny the validity of variety of other concepts to account for the forma- the analytical method of the Wundt-Mtiller-Titch- tion and properties of wholes. ener school. This approach Wertheimer rejected in There are many reasons for what I have called toto. Wertheimer and his colleagues cut away from the success of the Gestalt movement as contrasted mentalistic concepts as surely as did Watson but in with its precursors and contemporaries, but I will a positive way by concentrating on whole properties concentrate on what to me appear to be the most immediately given without the intervention of important ones. psychic acts or contents. Criticism of a point of First and foremost, it was a radical movement. view does not vanquish it unless it presents some- I once referred to the Benussi group as the left- thing better. In this respect Gestalttheorie, not wing Gestalters with their assumption of higher behaviorism, vanquished introspection by broaden- level processes to account for whole qualities, and ing the concept of immediately given, palpable data. Koffka said: "No, we are the radicals in rejecting Still another precursor of Gestalt, the imageless such processes," and he was, of course, right. thought movement, failed in its primary mission Gestalt was a radical departure from established because it offered nothing fundamentally or the- ways of looking at and interpreting things psycho- oretically new in dealing with thinking. They still logical. Just as in the politico-economic-social resorted to cross-sectional analysis when they in- world only radical movements force great leaps voked the "imageless thought" as an added element forward (sometimes backward), so in science, the to explain the purposiveness and logicality of more a point of view forces radically new interpreta- thought processes. Contrast this approach with tions of extant data, the greater is its impact. the Gestalt view that a train of thought is a Somewhere Koester has said: "He who does not temporal process like a melody in having beginning, shock his contemporaries is no true teacher of transitional, and end phases; and contrast the posterity." The Gestalt attack on analytical intro- Gestalt concept of insight with trial and error to spection, its rejection of attention, unconscious explain sudden solutions in both animals and men. processes, past experience, and association as ex- While Koffka (1935) seemed to resort to older planations of perceptual and ideational processes, views in his use of the trace and Wertheimer seemed its program of proceeding von oben nach unten to revert to associationistic principles in his use of rather than von unten nach oben as in the older such factors as similarity and nearness in explain- approaches, all forced reconsideration not only of ing formation of groups, it must be remembered the methods and theories current up to 1912, but that these concepts were meant to apply to whole, also of the data chosen for experimental manipula- organized units, and were not meant to be used in tion. Wholes, forms, large perceptual units, and the old analytical sense of cementing elements to groupings took the place of static descriptions of form complexes. reduced experiences. Contrast the Titchener-Dim- A second reason for the success of the Gestalt mick treatment of phi-movement with the studies movement was its experimental, factual, and con- of Wertheimer and of Koffka and his co-workers, crete approach. To be sure, Benussi was an active who not only described but formulated the neces- experimentalist and others also dealt with factual 1008 AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST data, but the great theorizers, Husserl, Meinong, complex perceptions, and for perception of a long and von Ehrenfels, were primarily philosophers word it becomes fantastic. That this account of rather than psychologists in our modern sense. Mullet's (1923) attention theory is not overdrawn These men dealt almost wholly in concepts, while can be checked by reading his statement of it in his the Gestalt psychologists drew from experiments book Komplextheorie und Gestaltthcorie. performed under carefully controlled laboratory The factors determining the formation of Gc- conditions. stalten were taken out of the psyche and put into Two main directions, before Wertheimer, can be stimulus and/or physiological configurations. Thus, discerned in attempts to account for the form whatever makes four dots appear as a square is due qualities of Mach and von Ehrenfels: (a) reduction to their structure, not to higher psychic activities of the form quality to parts and relations with in the individual.
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