Gestalt Psychology Paper

Throughout this semester of Psychology 150 I have learned a great deal about several different concepts that I consciously, and sometimes unconsciously, find myself applying to my life. There are five different psychology topics I found that held the most relevance to my life. Some of these topics do not deal with myself exclusively, but they do affect the people I hold dear to me. The topics range from disorders to personality differences, and they all affect me in some way, both indirectly and directly.

2. Gestalt theory said, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" meaning that the mind processes information simutouniousley. The gestalt theory made psychologists learn more about the way we learn and think. The work the Gestalt psychologists did lead to the rise of cognitive psychology in America, which

The Gestalt approach to therapy emerged during the 1950’s and was developed by Frederick Perls (1893-1970). The aim of Gestalt therapy is to increase awareness, so that the client comes to resolution of unfinished business and the integration of the thinking, feeling and sensing processes. In Gestalt therapy the emphasis is placed on the present experience, the perception of the individual as a whole and the direct awareness of emotions and action. Gestalt therapists believe that the emotional problems and frustrations that are experienced by individuals are attributed to the lack of recognition and understanding of their own feelings. In addition to this Gestaltist believe that many individuals lose

Growing up, I never considered myself as truly talented. I would watch my friends as they excelled in sports or received their black belt after playing the hardest song on the recorder. At that age, they probably dreamed of becoming a professional athlete or a musician, but where did I stand in all of this? Everything I did was either subpar or mediocre. There was never a field or an activity that I dominated in (except limboing but that won’t get me anywhere in life). It wasn’t until one day when I saw my friend crying on our first day back from spring break, when I learned that I did have a talent after all. After consoling her, I learned that her grandfather had passed over the break; but I also learned that I have a raw talent for comforting others, talking to them, making them feel just a little bit better about life. As I reflect on this day, I know that my young, psychoanalytic self was born to be a psychologist.

In Psychology 101, you learn about a personal fable; something that I have not lost. I have always wanted to change the world that I was destined for greatness and teaching elementary school students gives me that power. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

These organizing principles will determine how the elements in a scene will be grouped together..The role of the Gestalt principles in perceptual organization gives everyone the ability to see objects as continues, simple, similar, and proximity. Continuation allows the human brain to look at a coil of rope as one continuos rope and ropes that overlap each other as two separate strands of rope. If a person did not have the ability of continuation simple processes would take a lot longer while a person uncoiled the entire ropes to make sure that it was one continuos rope. Pragnanz gives a person the ability to look at something in a simplier form when there are more complex ways to look at it. Such is the case with the Olympic five circles, the prananz theory gives the human the ability to see it as five rings flowing together but the brain without the ability may look at it as nine different objects that did not have any flow or connection to them at all. Similarity is when similar items will appear to be grouped together. Grouping can occure when there are items that are of similar shape, size, or orientation. Proximity is very important on how the brain can group similar object together and how by changing the color of some objects will redirect the brain to a different patternization. Such is the case when a block of dots that are 7 high and 7 wide. If all of the dots are the same color the perception in the brain would group them in a horizontal pattern but once

The fact that we link things that are similar and treat them like a group is the Law of Similarity. We tend to group similar shapes together and often times, we try to attach some type of meaning to them. Grouping can happen both visually and auditory.

When I started this class this pass September I had a little knowledge of psychology. In my junior year of high school I took Psychology as an elective class. I really enjoy it alot, it amaze me how much there was to know about our brains. This September I came with the feeling that this psychology class was going to be way different from my psychology class from high school. And that my knowledge from my class before wasn’t going to be useful at all. But I was wrong, this class has actually been better than my other class. Because it has help dust off some of the concepted that I had learn before. But it has also made gain more knowledge about psychology that I didn’t knew before. For example the next concepts are the ones that had impacted me the most: critical thinking and the eight essential, implicit learning, short term and long term memories. I chose these concept because they have not only taught me more about psychology, but they have made a big impact on me.

* Predict: Offering predictions (or hypotheses) about how a given condition or set of conditions will affect

Since being discovered, gestalt psychology created vital contributions to the psychology of thinking and problem solving influenced by thinkers, including, Immanuel Kant, Ernst Mach and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This paper will reflect on the main influences on Gestalt psychology, their contributions, and the principles of perceptual organization.

Gestalt therapy is a type of therapy used to deepen our awareness of ourselves. According to O’Connor and Braverman, (2009) “Gestalt" implies wholeness. “Gestalt therapy is a process-oriented, experiential therapy that is concerned with the integrated functioning of all aspects of the person: senses, body, emotions and intellect.”

I chose Gestalt Psychology for my first perspective, it is how people experience objects and perceive things as a whole. Gestalt allows us to look at everyday objects and distinguish them from their surroundings. Without the Gestalt Theory people would see every atom that made up a whole object. As I look at my computer screen, I do not see every little atom, I see the screen as a whole. From this perspective, learning objects as a whole instead of each individual part is beneficial because it allows us to open our minds for new learning experiences. However, there may be things in life that do not provide enough visual clues to determine what it is supposed to be.

This research article was taken from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Journal. This specific issue had a total of ten articles, and while they are covering different topics and studies, some of them do focus on similar ideas. Psychology is all about the study of the mind, and how it has different parts intended for unique functions. It seems like a good portion of the articles for this specific journal deal with emotions and how the body interprets them. One article deals with the stress of different generations, while another deals with an individual’s willpower against sugar. There is an article about self-esteem and how that varies during a lifetime, as well as an article on cooperation. The article that will be specifically discussed in this research paper also has to deal with how the body interprets things when it comes to a stressful situation, such as a crime. It looks at how reliable eyewitness testimony is after traumatic events, specifically in regards to lineups.

Kant is a philosopher, which makes one of the antecedents of Gestalt to be philosophy. Some of Kant’s views were that “elements are organized meaningfully not through some mechanical process of association” (Shultz & Shultz 2012 p.264). This is to say that the mind is able to process the characteristics and basics of an image or structure before it and process it as if there was a complex puzzle that needed to be solved and from there on out, the mind knows it to be as a whole image. It’s the brain placing two and two together to make four. An object does not change but the viewpoint does. Mathematics also began Gestalt through Ernst Mach. According to Mach there are patterns and melodies that could potentially be formed into a sensation perceived by the conscious, for example a circle could be various colors or various sizes, but it never loses it’s circularity (Shultz & Shultz 2012 p. 264). Another discipline that preceded Gestalt psychology would be Phenomenology, which is known as the “unbiased description of an immediate experience” (Shultz & Shultz 2012 p. 264). With this discipline, individuals would not reduce the experience, which they have just experienced and would be described as it occurred.

Gestalt therapy is a type of therapy used to deepen our awareness of ourselves. According to O’Connor and Braverman, (2009) “Gestalt" implies wholeness. Gestalt can also be considered as the essence, or shape of a complete form. A theoretical opposite of structuralism, the entity constitutes more than the sum of its parts. Gestalt therapy is comprised of a complex psychological system that stresses the development of client self-awareness and personal responsibility through a process-oriented, experiential and phenomenological modality that addresses the totality of an individual in terms of senses, body, emotions and intellect.” In an active process, suppressed feelings can be explored in depth and through understanding of the how