What is Gestalt | Psychology Concepts.

The psychology was consolidated, throughout the 19th century, as a philosophical aspect; During this period she studied only the behavior, emotions and perception. Applied then the atomism – sought to understand the whole through knowledge of the parties, being possible to perceive an image just by means of its elements. In opposition to this process, was born the Gestalt -German term untranslatable, with an approximate sense of figure, shape, appearance.
Around 1870, some German scholars began researching the human perception, mainly the vision. To achieve this end, they were especially of art works, while trying to understand how you got certain pictorial effects. This research gave rise to Gestalt psychology or psychology of good shape. Its most famous practitioners were Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler and Max Werteimer, who developed the laws of Gestalt, valid until our days. With its theoretical development, the Gestalt has expanded its range of acting and became a solid philosophical line.
This doctrine brings itself the conception that it cannot meet all through the parts, but the parts through the set. This has its own laws, that coordinate its elements. Only in this way the brain perceives, interprets and embeds an image or idea. According to the Austrian psychologist Christian von Ehrenfels, who in 1890 laid the seeds of future research on Gestalt psychology, there are two features of form – the sensitive, inherent to the object, and the formal, which include our views on the matter, which imbues our ideals and our worldviews. The Union of these sensations generates the perception. It is very important in this theory the idea that the whole is more than the sum of its elements; so one must imagine that a third factor is raised in this synthesis.

Laws of Gestalt

Observing the spontaneous behaviour of the brain during the process of perception, came the drafting of laws governing this College to meet the objects. These standards may be summarized as:
  • Similarity: similar Objects tend to remain together, whether in the colors, the textures or prints of these mass elements. This feature can be used as a factor of harmony or disharmony visual.
  • Proximity: more Parts next to each other, in a certain place, lean to be seen as a group.
  • Good Continuation: Harmonic Alignment of shapes.
  • Pregnância: This is the postulate of the natural simplicity of perception, for better assimilation of the image. It is practically the most important law.
  • Clausura: proper form closes on itself, forming a figure who has well-marked boundaries.
  • Experience Closed: this law is related to atomism, thought prior to the Gestalt. If we know previously determined way, surely the better understand, through associations of the here and now with a previous experience.

Gestalt Therapy

The Gestalt Therapy arose at the hands of German physician Fritz Perls (1893-1970), who had great interest in neurology and Psychiatry subsequently. This way became a psychoanalyst. To elaborate new psychoanalytic ideas, was expelled from the Society of Psychoanalysis. After a meeting with Freud, broke definitely with this field of research. In 1946, Fritz immigrated to America, settling permanently in New York, where he met his great collaborator, Paul Goodman. Together they introduced the concept of Gestalt Therapy, getting after the support and the assistance of Fritz's wife, Lore, and other authors. Were inspired by several chains, such as Existentialism, psychology of Gestalt, Phenomenology, Goldstein's Organismic theory, field theory of Lewin, the Holism of Smuts, the Psychodrama of Moreno, Reich, Buber and, finally, the Eastern philosophy.

The Gestaltpedagogia

In the field of pedagogy, the Gestalt also found fertile ground. The Russian Hilarion Petzold, living in Germany, was the first to introduce this possibility in the educational area. In 1977, he creates the Gestaltpedagogia, a transfer of the therapeutic principles of Gestalt philosophy for the context of education, aiming to solve the main problems of today's teaching.
More than 50 years after the creation of Gestalt Therapy, these philosophical principles conquered its place in the psychotherapeutic panorama, as well as in education and in the area of corporate Human Resources.

Sources:

http://www.gestaltsp.com.br/o-que-e-gestalt/
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