Gestalt Psychology Today
By Wolfgang Köhler (1959)
First published in American Psychologist, 14, 727-734.
In 1949, the late Herbert Langfeld gave a lecture in Europe in which he described what appeared to him to be the major trends in American psychology. He also mentioned Gestalt psychology; but he added that the main observations, questions, and principles characteristic of this school had become part of every American psychologist's mental equipment. I was not so optimistic. And, in fact, the very next year attempts were made to explain the molar units in perception by processes which gradually connect neural elements. Soon afterwards, a theory of conditioning was developed, according to which more and more components of a stimulus object are gradually conditioned, and the course of the whole process can be explained in this fashion. Such theories may prove to be very useful, but one can hardly say that, at the time, their authors were greatly influenced by Gestalt psychology. It is for this and similar reasons that a new discussion of old questions seems to me indicated.
I should like to begin with a few remarks about the history of Gestalt psychology -- because not all chapters of this history are generally known. In the eighties of the past century, psychologists in Europe were greatly disturbed by von Ehrenfels' claim that thousands of percepts have characteristics which cannot be derived from the characteristics of their ultimate components, the so-called sensations. Chords and melodies in hearing, the shape characteristics of visual objects, the roughness or the smoothness of tactual impressions, and so forth were used as examples. All these "Gestalt qualities" have one thing in common. When the physical stimuli in question are considerably changed, while their relations are kept constant, the Gestalt qualities remain about the same. But, At the time, it was generally assumed that the sensations involved are individually determined by their individual stimuli and must therefore change when these are greatly changed. How, then, could any characteristics of the perceptual situation remain constant under these conditions? Where did the Gestalt qualities come from? Ehrenfels' qualities are not fancy ingredients of this or that particular situation which we might safely ignore. Both positive and negative esthetic characteristics of the world around us, not only of ornaments, paintings, sculptures, tunes, and so forth, but also of trees, landscapes, houses, cars -- and other persons --belong to this class. That relations between the sexes largely depend on specimens of the same class need hardly be emphasized. It is, therefore, not safe to deal with problems of psychology as though there were no such qualities. And yet, beginning with Ehrenfels himself, psychologists have not been able to explain their nature.