FEDERAL EDUCATION AGENCY

STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

"POMORSK STATE UNIVERSITY

NAMED AFTER M.V. LOMONOSOV "

Department of Psychology

Test

in the discipline "General Psychology"

Completed: 2nd year student of correspondence course FPNO and SP, specialty "Social Pedagogy"

Korotkov Yuri Petrovich

Checked by the teacher:

Ivanova Marina Vitalievna

Arkhangelsk, 2010

1. Brief description of the main directions of psychology: psychoanalysis, gestalt psychology, cognitive psychology, behaviorism, humanistic psychology, Russian psychology.

Psychoanalysis created at the end of the 19th century by the Austrian scientist Z. Freud. Initially, Freud was engaged in physiological research, even invented a method for staining nerve tissues, but later, seeing the inapplicability of this knowledge in psychological counseling, he refused any reliance on psychophysiological data in his works. In the early period of psychoanalysis, Freud, together with Joseph Breuer, developed a cathartic method of treating neuroses, in relation to which the term "abreaction" was later applied. The turning point for psychoanalysis is considered July 24, 1895, when Freud had a dream, after which he came to the conclusion that dreams make sense, being symbolic messages from the unconscious, and lend themselves to rational analysis and interpretation. This later led to the use of the free association method by Freud.

Until 1910, when psychoanalysis was supported by a psychiatrist with a CG Jung degree, this trend was ignored by the scientific world. In the first half of the 20th century, a number of trends branched off from "classical Freudianism" - KG Jung, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm and others, who challenged one or another of Freud's postulates.

Psychoanalysis has developed rapidly over the past half century. Modern theoretical developments (for example, object relations theory) have significantly expanded the boundaries of psychoanalytic knowledge.

The essence of psychoanalysis

The theory of human behavior, the first and one of the most influential theories of personality in psychology - see also Psychology of Personality. Usually refers to the classical psychoanalysis created by Sigmund Freud, but also applies to any derivative (even a very different theory), such as Jung's analytical psychology or Adler's individual psychology, which they prefer to denote by the term “neopsychoanalysis”.

Basic ideas of psychoanalysis

The unconscious is a special psychic force that lies outside of consciousness, but controls human behavior.

The conscious - one of the two parts of the psyche, realized by the individual - determines the choice of behavior in the social environment, but not entirely, since the choice of behavior itself can be initiated by the unconscious. Consciousness and the unconscious are in antagonistic relations, in an endless struggle, the unconscious always wins. The psyche is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle, which is modified into the reality principle, and when the balance is disturbed, a reset is carried out through the unconscious sphere.

Gestalt psychology.

Gestalt psychology (German Gestalt - holistic form or structure) is a school of psychology at the beginning of the 20th century. Founded by Max Wertheimer in 1912.

The primary data of psychology are integral structures (gestalts), which, in principle, cannot be derived from their constituent components. Gestalts have their own characteristics and laws, in particular, the "law of grouping", "the law of relation" (figure / background).

Gestalt (German Gestalt - form, image, structure) is a spatially visual form of perceived objects, whose essential properties cannot be understood by summing the properties of their parts. One of the striking examples of this, according to Keller, is a melody that is recognizable even if it is transposed to other elements. When we hear a melody for the second time, then, thanks to memory, we recognize it. But if the composition of its elements changes, we will still recognize the melody as the same. “If the similarity of two phenomena (or physiological processes) is due to the number of identical elements and is proportional to it, then we are dealing with sums. If there is no correlation between the number of identical elements and the degree of similarity, and the similarity is due to the functional structures of two integral phenomena as such, then we have a gestalt ”(Karl Dunker).

Gestalt psychology arose from the study of perception. In the center of her attention is the characteristic tendency of the psyche to organize experience into an intelligible whole. For example, when we perceive letters with "holes" (missing parts), the consciousness seeks to fill the gap, and we recognize the whole letter.

Gestalt psychology owes its appearance to the German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffke and Wolfgang Köhler, who put forward a program for studying the psyche from the point of view of integral structures - gestalts. Opposing the principle put forward by psychology of dividing consciousness into elements and constructing complex mental phenomena from them, they proposed the idea of \u200b\u200bthe integrity of the image and the irreducibility of its properties to the sum of the properties of the elements. According to these theorists, the objects that make up our environment are perceived by the senses not as separate objects, but as organized forms. Perception is not reduced to the sum of sensations, and the properties of the figure are not described through the properties of the parts. The gestalt itself is a functional structure that regulates the diversity of individual phenomena.

Gestalt psychology believed that the whole is not derived from the sum of the properties and functions of its parts (the properties of the whole are not equal to the sum of the properties of its parts), but has a qualitatively higher level. Gestalt psychology changed the previous view of consciousness, proving that its analysis is designed to deal not with individual elements, but with integral mental images. Gestalt psychology opposed associative psychology, which dismembers consciousness into elements. Gestalt psychology, along with phenomenology and psychoanalysis, formed the basis of F. Perls' gestalt therapy, who transferred the ideas of Gestalt psychologists from cognitive processes to the level of world outlook in general.

Cognitive psychology - a section of psychology that studies cognitive, i.e., cognitive processes of human consciousness. Research in this area is usually related to issues of memory, attention, feelings, presentation of information, logical thinking, imagination, ability to make decisions. Cognitive abilities in information units are not very high and, according to the experimental data of V.M. Livshits, amount to 120 bit / person hour. The cognitive process obeys the gnoseological principle of A. N. Kolmogorov and has a wave form in nonlinear media.

Many provisions of cognitive psychology underlie modern psycholinguistics. This direction arose under the influence of the informational approach. Cognitive psychology is largely based on the analogy between the transformation of information in a computing device and the implementation of cognitive processes in humans. Thus, numerous structural components (blocks) of cognitive and executive processes, primarily memory, were identified (R. Atkinson).

The most widespread is the computational version, where the psyche is represented as a device with a fixed ability to convert signals. Here, the main role is assigned to internal cognitive schemes and the activity of the organism in the process of cognition.

Imagine the actions that a computer performs: receiving, manipulating symbols, storing elements of information in memory, retrieving them from memory, etc. Does this not prompt us to assume that cognitive processes are real, "that they can be investigated and even perhaps understood" (W. Neisser). In this case, the human cognitive system is considered as a system that has devices for input, storage, output of information, taking into account its capacity.

Behaviorism - a trend in psychology that defined the face of American psychology in the 20th century, radically transformed the entire system of ideas about the psyche. His credo was expressed by the formula according to which the subject of psychology is behavior, not consciousness. (Hence the name - from the English. Behavior, behavior.) Since then it was customary to equate the psyche and consciousness (mental processes were considered that begin and end in consciousness), a version arose that, by eliminating consciousness, behaviorism thereby eliminates the psyche ...

The true meaning of the events associated with the emergence and rapid development of the behaviorist movement was different and consisted not in the annihilation of the psyche, but in a change in the concept of it.

One of the pioneers of the behavioral movement was Edward Thorndike (1874-1949). He himself did not call himself a behaviorist, but a "connectionist" (from the English. "Connection" - connection). However, researchers and their concepts should be judged not by how they call themselves, but by their role in the development of knowledge. Thorndike's work opened the first chapter in the annals of behaviorism.

Thorndike, more than anyone else, prepared the way for behaviorism. At the same time, as noted, he did not consider himself a behaviorist; in his explanations of learning processes, he used concepts that later emerged behaviorism demanded to be expelled from psychology. These were concepts related, firstly, to the mental sphere in its traditional understanding (in particular, the concepts of the states of satisfaction and discomfort experienced by the body during the formation of connections between motor reactions and external situations), and secondly, to neurophysiology (in particular, The "law of readiness", which, according to Thorndike, involves a change in the ability to conduct impulses). Behavioral theory forbade the behavioral researcher to refer to both the subject's experience and physiological factors.

"Tell me - and I will forget, show me - and I will remember, let me do - and I will understand." The book "Delegation and Management" Confucius (a representative of ancient Chinese philosophy).

The majority perceives psychology as a complex of phenomena from life. Although, on the other hand, this is a system of proven knowledge, with its help a variety of practical and purely scientific problems are solved. In the 16th century, "psychology" was first mentioned as a field that studies phenomena from the mental and psychological side. In the 17th and 19th centuries, the field of research expanded significantly and included processes of the unconscious level. And since the 19th century, psychology has been an experimental field of scientific knowledge.

Gestalt psychology what is it?

Gestalt psychology is a direction in psychology that arose during a crisis period in science (1920). Founder - M. Wertheimer, work on the idea was continued by K. Levin, W. Keller and K. Koffka. Gestalt psychology originated in Germany and became a kind of objection to the program developed by Wundt.

The human visual consciousness was investigated. Based on the results obtained, a new unit "gestalt" was derived (gestalt in psychology is a unitary form). Its essence is that people tend to understand the world around them as a coherent integral structure, and not each element separately.

Supporters of Gestalt psychology denied the effectiveness of structural psychology (consciousness is divided into blocks) and everything on which it is oriented. They even formulated a kind of law stating that "the whole is in any case greater than the totality of its constituent elements."

According to Wikipedia, the phenomenal field was originally the subject of gestalt psychology. In the future, the topic has seriously expanded: questions about the problems of mental development, the range of needs of individuals, memory and extraordinary thinking have been included.

The emergence and development of the school of gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology was born after a very important experiment by Max Wertheimer called the phi phenomenon. The essence of the study: using a tachyostoscope and a stroboscope, the scientist observed two straight lines (stimuli) in the participants, transmitting them at different speeds. Thus, he found out that:

• lines are perceived sequentially if the gap is large;
• lines are realized simultaneously if the gap is minimal;
• awareness of the movement appears (the test person followed the movement of the line in a certain direction, and not two together or one after the other);
• “Phi-phenomenon”, if the interval is optimal (exceptionally pure movement is realized, the subject understands that there is movement, but without changing the position of the line itself).

He detailed the results of the experiment in his work in 1912. This and his other works attracted the interest of many famous scientists of that time. Further, Gestalt psychology acquired many representatives, the most important of which was K. Koffka.

The results of his own research are shown in Perception: An Introduction to Gestalt Theory. In 1921, the book "Fundamentals of Mental Development" was published, which tells about the formation of child psychology. Labor enjoyed immense popularity both in Germany and abroad.

Koffka's research on perception in children has revealed a number of interesting patterns. One of them: initially, the child actually owns a set of partial and not very logical images of the entire external world. Then the scientist decided that perception is strongly influenced by the ratio of the figure and the background on which the object is located. Then he formulated the law of transduction in psychology. In a gestalt school, this is one of the theories of perception, briefly outlining which it turns out that children are aware not of the colors themselves, but their combinations.

Gestalt what is it in psychology: ideas, laws and principles

Consciousness is what the Gestalt psychologist works with, as a representative of the school. In fact, it is a living whole in which all the constituent elements interact with each other. A good analogue: the human body as a whole consists of many systems that have been working harmoniously and regularly for many years. Gestalt psychology is based on the following basic concepts:

• What is Gestalt? A measure of consciousness, a kind of figurative configuration.
• Gestalt psychology uses consciousness as a subject of research. Its study is based on the use of the principle of integrity.
• Observation and description are the main research methods. Perception does not come from sensations, they are unreal. It comes from hearing as a reflection of a change in air pressure.
• Visual perception comes first. This is the leading process in psychology that determines the degree of development of the psyche.
• Thinking is the process of solving problems using structured fields. Through insight in the present time.

The basic laws of perception in Gestalt psychology:

• Transposition. The psyche responds to a complex of stimuli, and not to each one separately.
• Constancy. All processes strive for immutability.
• Proximity. The tendency to combine adjacent elements into one whole.
• Figure and background in Gestalt psychology occupy one of the most important places. Each figure is an isolated whole, the background is something dynamic behind the figure.
• The law of pregnancies. The tendency to react to the most consistent and simple figure possible.
• Closure. If a person sees something incomprehensible, then the brain tries to transform the information into what is familiar to us.

Gestalt psychology is a direction in psychology in which all laws of perception are in contact with each other, using certain principles:

• proximity;
• isolation;
• common area;
• similarity;
• adjacency;
• integrity.

Gestalt theory of perception is guided by 3 constants:

• The size. It remains unchanged, regardless of the change in its position on the retina.
• The form. It always remains constant.
• Brightness. The brightness of the subject remains unchanged, even with changing lighting conditions.

Gestalt therapy

This is one of the types of psychotherapy, founded by F. Perls in the 50s of the last century. The subject of gestalt therapy is contact and boundaries in which a person and everything that surrounds him is. Contact - solvating the needs of the individual with the capabilities of the environment. It turns out that a specific need can be satisfied only through contact with the outside world. (You can quench your thirst with water.)

The main technique of such therapy is a game based on a dialogue within oneself. The conversation is conducted with one or more parts of oneself. In principle, all therapy is aimed at completing some previously abandoned case - gestalt.

The circle of the correct gestalt looks like this:

1. There is a need.
2. We are looking for ways to satisfy it.
3. Satisfaction occurs.
4. Contact with the outside world ends.

There are always a number of factors that get in the way of a perfect process. If the cycle is incomplete, then the person throughout his life feels exhausted and cannot open up to new desires. An incomplete gestalt can cause a serious failure in the protective properties of the human psyche.

Gestalt psychology and therapy is an opportunity to help "oneself" and find the root causes of internal inconsistencies, in short. There are a number of exercises aimed at accepting oneself and what lies beyond reality at the same time. They should help you start thinking about yourself and open up to the world. More fun interactive content developed by leading psychologists can be found on BrainApps. Self-development tests and courses, over 90 exciting games will allow you to deal with your inner feelings even faster and put everything in its place.

Gestalt clip art

Gestalt drawings are called pictures of shape-shifters (illusions). Looking at them, you need to answer what you see and what emotions the image evokes. Such materials are not recommended for viewing by preschoolers, as they can lead to various mental disorders. Below are the well-known "optical illusions". And what exactly did you see on them?

Gestalt Psychology is a branch of psychology that originated in Germany. It allows you to study and understand the psyche from the point of view of holistic structures that are primary in relation to certain components.

This article will make it possible to understand what the theory of gestalt psychology is and who are its representatives. Further, we will consider such points as the history of the emergence of this direction of psychology, as well as what principles are laid in its foundation.

Definitions and concepts

Before considering ideas and principles, it is necessary to define the basic concepts of Gestalt psychology. This is a psychological direction that aims to explain perception, thinking and personality in general.

This direction is built on gestalts - forms of organization that create the integrity of psychological phenomena. In other words, a gestalt is a kind of structure that has integral qualities, in contrast to the sum of its components. For example, a portrait or photograph of a certain person includes a set of certain elements, but other people perceive the image as a whole (and in each case it is perceived differently).

The history of the emergence of this psychological direction

The history of the development of the direction of Gestalt psychology dates back to 1912, when Max Wertheimer published his first scientific work on this topic. This work was based on the fact that Wertheimer questioned the generally accepted idea of \u200b\u200bthe presence of separately existing elements in the process of perceiving something. Thanks to this, the 1920s went down in history as a period of development of the school of Gestalt psychology. The main personalities who figured in the origin of this trend:

1. Max Wertheimer.
2. Kurt Koffka.
3. Wolfgang Koehler.
4. Kurt Levin.

These scientists have made an invaluable contribution to the development of this area. However, more details about these representatives of Gestalt psychology will be discussed a little later. These people set themselves a difficult task. The first and main representatives of Gestalt psychology were those who wanted to transfer physical laws to psychological phenomena.

The principles of this psychological direction

Representatives of Gestalt psychology have established that the unity of perception, as well as its orderliness, is achieved on the basis of the following principles:

1. Proximity (stimuli that are closely located tend to be perceived not individually, but collectively).
2. Similarity (stimuli that have a similar size, shape, color, or shape, are perceived together).
3. Integrity (perception tends towards simplification and integrity).
4. Closure (describes the tendency to complete a figure so that it takes on a holistic form).
5. Adjacency (close position of stimuli in time and space).
6. Common area (Gestalt principles shape everyday perception as well as past experience).
7. The principle of figure and background (anything that is given meaning acts as a figure that has a less structured background).

Guided by these principles, representatives of Gestalt psychology were able to determine the main provisions of this direction of psychology.

Basic provisions

Based on the principles, the main provisions can be described as follows:

1. All processes of psychology are integral processes that have their own structure, which has its own set of specific elements that will always be secondary to it. Based on this, the subject of Gestalt psychology is consciousness, which has a structure filled with closely related elements.
2. Perception has such a feature as constancy. This suggests that the constancy of perception is the relative immutability of certain properties that objects possess (in the presence of changes in the conditions of perception). For example, it can be lighting constancy or color.

Fundamental ideas of gestalt psychology

Representatives of this school identified the following basic ideas of this area of \u200b\u200bpsychology:

1. Consciousness is an integral and dynamic field in which all its points are in constant interaction with each other.
2. Creation is analyzed with gestalts.
3. Gestalt is a holistic structure.
4. Gestalts are investigated through objective observation and description of the contents of perception.
5. Sensations are not the basis of perception, since the former cannot exist physically.
6. The main mental process is visual perception, which determines the development of the psyche and is subject to its own laws.
7. Thinking is a process that is not shaped by experience.
8. Thinking is the process of solving certain problems, which is carried out through "insight".

Having determined what this direction in psychology is, as well as having understood its foundations, it is necessary to describe in more detail who are the representatives of Gestalt psychology, and also what contribution they made to the development of this scientific field.

Max Wertheimer

As noted earlier, he is the founder of Gestalt psychology. The scientist was born in the Czech Republic, but he conducted his scientific activities in Germany.

According to historical data, during a vacation, Max Wertheimer was struck by the idea of \u200b\u200bconducting an experiment in order to understand why a person can see the movement of a certain object at a time when in reality it is absent. Descending on the platform of Frankfurt, Wertheimer acquired the most ordinary toy stroboscope in order to conduct an experiment right at the hotel. After some time, the scientist continued his observations in a more formal setting at the University of Frankfurt.

In general, these studies were aimed at studying the perception of the movement of objects, which does not actually occur. During the experiment, the scientist used the term "impression of movement." With the help of such a device as a tachistoscope, Max Wertheimer passed a beam of light through small holes in the toy (one slot of the toy was positioned vertically, and the second had deviations from the first by twenty to thirty degrees).

During the study, a beam of light was passed through the first slot and then through the second. When the light passed through the second slit, the time interval was increased to two hundred milliseconds. In this case, the participants in the experiment observed how light appears first in the first, and then in the second slit. However, if the time interval for the illumination of the second slit was reduced, then the impression was created that both slits were constantly illuminated. And when the second slot was illuminated for 60 milliseconds, it seemed as if the light was constantly moving from one slot to the second, and then returning back.

The scientist was convinced that such a phenomenon is in its own way elementary, but at the same time it represents something different from one or even several simple sensations. Subsequently, Max Wertheimer gave this phenomenon the name "phi-phenomenon".

Many have tried to refute the results of this experiment. In particular, Wundt's theory confirmed that the perception of two light strips in the vicinity should have been created, but nothing more. However, no matter how rigorously introspection was carried out in Wertheimer's experiment, the strip continued to move, and it was not possible to explain this phenomenon using the existing theoretical positions. In this experiment, the whole was the movement of the light line, and the sum of the constituent elements was two fixed lines of light.

Wertheimer's experience challenged conventional atomistic associationist psychology. The results of the experiment were published in 1912. This was the beginning of Gestalt psychology.

Kurt Koffka

Another representative of Gestalt psychology is Kurt Koffka. He was a German-American psychologist who conducted his scientific activities with Wertheimer.

He devoted enough time to understand how perception works and from what it is formed. In the course of his scientific activity, he established that a child who is being born does not yet have formed gestalts. For example, a small child may not even recognize a loved one if he changes some details of his appearance. However, in the process of life, gestalts are formed in any person. Over time, the child already becomes able to recognize his mother or grandmother, even if they change their hair color, haircut or any other element of appearance that distinguishes them from other, stranger women.

Wolfgang Köhler (Keller)

Gestalt psychology as a scientific field owes a lot to this scientist, as he wrote many books that became the basis of the theory, and conducted several amazing experiments. Kohler was convinced that physics as a science should have a certain connection with psychology.

In 1913, Koehler traveled to the Canary Islands, where he studied chimpanzee behavior. In one experiment, the scientist placed a banana outside the cage for animals. The fruit was tied with a rope, and the chimpanzee easily solved this problem - the animal simply pulled the rope and brought the treat closer to itself. Kohler concluded that this was an easy task for an animal and made it more difficult. The scientist stretched several ropes to the banana, and the chimpanzee did not know which one leads to the treat, so he was more often mistaken. Kohler concluded that the animal's decision in this situation is unconscious.

The course of another experiment was slightly different. The banana was still placed outside the cage, and a stick was placed between them (opposite the banana). In this case, the animal perceived all objects as elements of one situation and easily pushed the delicacy towards itself. However, when the stick was at the other end of the cage, the chimpanzee did not perceive the objects as elements of one situation.

The third experiment was conducted under similar conditions. Likewise, the banana was placed outside the cage at an inaccessible distance, and the monkey was given two sticks, which were too short to reach the fruit. To solve the problem, the animal needed to insert one stick into another and get a treat.

The essence of all these experiments came down to one thing - to compare the results of perception of objects in different situations. All these examples, just like Max Wertheimer's experiment with light, proved that perceptual experience has the quality of integrity (completeness), which its components do not have. In other words, perception is a gestalt, and the attempt to decompose it into its components ends in failure.

The research made it clear to Koehler that animals solved their assigned problems either through trial and error or through sudden awareness. Thus, a conclusion was formed - objects lying in the field of one perception and not connected with each other, when solving problems, are combined into a common structure, the realization of which helps to solve the problem.

Kurt Levin

This scientist put forward a theory that compares the pressures of society, which determines the behavior of a person with various physical forces (internal - feelings, external - the perception of other people's desires or expectations). This theory is called "field theory".

Levin argued that personality is a system in which there are subsystems that are in interaction. Carrying out his experiments, Levin noted that when a feature is active, the state of the subsystem is tense, and if the activity is interrupted, it will still be tense until the moment it returns to performing the action. If there is no logical completion of the action, then the stress is substituted or drained.

In simple terms, Levin tried to prove the relationship between human behavior and the environment. This scientist moved away from the ideas of the influence of experience on the structure of the personality. Field theory states that human behavior is absolutely independent of the future or the past, but it also depends on the present.

Gestalt Psychology and Gestalt Therapy: Definition and Differences

Recently, Gestalt therapy has become a very popular area of \u200b\u200bpsychotherapy. The methods of Gestalt psychology and Gestalt therapy are different, and the latter is more often criticized by the adherents of the former.

According to some sources, Fritz Perls is a scientist who is considered the founder of Gestalt therapy, which is not related to the scientific school of Gestalt psychology. He synthesized psychoanalysis, the ideas of bioenergetics and gestalt psychology. However, there is nothing from the school founded by Max Wertheimer in this direction of therapy. Some sources argue that in fact, the attachment to Gestalt psychology was just an advertising ploy to draw attention to the synthesized direction of psychotherapy.

At the same time, other sources note that such therapy is still associated with the school of Gestalt psychology. However, this connection is not direct, but it is still there.

Conclusion

Having understood in detail who are the representatives of Gestalt psychology, as well as what this area of \u200b\u200bscientific activity is, we can conclude that it is aimed at studying perception, which is an integral structure.

Gestalt approaches have penetrated into many scientific fields over time. For example, in pathopsychology or personality theory, as well as such approaches are found in social psychology, the psychology of learning and perception. Today it is difficult to imagine such scientific fields as non-behaviormism or cognitive psychology without Gestalt psychology.

As noted earlier, the main representatives of Gestalt psychology are Wertheimer, Koffka, Levin and Koehler. Having learned about the activities of these people, one can understand that this direction has played a huge role in the development of world psychology.

Gestalt psychology is a general psychological direction, which is associated with attempts to explain, first of all, perception, thinking and personality. Gestalt psychology puts forward the principle of integrity as the main explanatory principle.

Gestalt psychology concept

Gestalt psychology emerged as an attempt by psychologists to construct psychology by analogy with physics. There was a period of the so-called open crisis in psychology, when the classical psychology of consciousness, which tried to explain our subjective experience by dividing it into separate elements-sensations and the traces of previous sensations associated with them in the past experience, exhausted itself. Such data began to accumulate that it became clear that in our consciousness the whole cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. A holistic image of perception cannot be assembled from separate sensations associated with color, shape, surface quality, and so on. And Gestalt psychology decided that it would try to give an explanation for this, using as a basis the concept of a phenomenal subjective field that exists in our consciousness, which can be compared with an external electromagnetic field - forces are also acting in it. And from the action and reaction of these forces, the final image is formed, which cannot be added from its individual elements.

Something was clear even before Gestalt psychology took shape as a separate psychological direction. For example, in the 19th century, an Austrian researcher named Christian von Ehrenfels introduced the principle of transposition. We can take the same melody and play it a tone higher or a tone lower. Each note will change, but we still recognize the melody. This is the idea that a holistic image ("gestalt") is not reducible to the sum of individual elements.

History of Gestalt Psychology

The emergence of Gestalt psychology as such can be traced back to 1912, when one of its founders, Max Wertheimer (or Wertheimer - in Russian translations he is called differently), published a description of one of the most striking phenomena of the irreducibility of perception to the sum of individual sensations, which he called phi- a phenomenon. Gestalt psychologists, since they tried to work on the model of physics, were very fond of denoting all phenomena in Greek letters. Wertheimer was driving home to rest on the train, looking out the window, and suddenly it occurred to him that if we observe two blinking points in turn, two light sources, then we will perceive the movement of this light source from one point to another (according to this principle, cinematography and cartoons), and with an even slightly higher speed of presentation, we will see "pure" movement - not the movement of an object, but movement as such, which Wertheimer designated as a phi-phenomenon. He jumped off the train, locked himself in a hotel for a month, and studied this phenomenon. This could not be explained by modern psychology of that time, because something that we perceive had to be formed as a sum of sensations, and there could be no sensations from intermediate positions between the two extreme positions. There is objectively no movement there, but we perceive it.

Then the idea arose that the whole is irreducible to the sum of parts, that it is more important than the parts, and can determine their perception. Whole or wholeness (‘figure’) came to be denoted by the German word Gestalt... Then psychologists began to study what laws are behind the formation of gestalt - first on the material of perception, then on the material of thinking, then these ideas penetrated into the psychology of motivation and the psychology of personality, and then almost all American social psychology grew out of them, because the main gestalt psychologist of personality Kurt Lewin was forced to flee during the Nazi era (in fact, like many Gestalt psychologists) to America and there he greatly influenced the development of local psychology.

The concept of gestalt in gestalt psychology

Word Gestalt from German it is translated as 'form' or 'figure'. But in Gestalt psychology, it has rather the meaning of integrity or whole, not reducible to the sum of its parts. For example, if we are talking about perception, integrity (gestalt) will mean the so-called good or balanced organization of the visual field.

Gestalt psychologists try to describe everything in the language of force interactions and assume that all the elements of the world around us, when we perceive them, obey the interaction of two types of forces: binding forces that try to unite all these elements into a single whole, and restraining ones, which prevent the entire surrounding world from curling up. one point or one spot. Achieving a balance between these forces is the finding of what we call gestalt. Moreover, when we simply perceive the world around us, we may not notice it. And we notice in the case when we are dealing with configurations, for example, dual or broken. We recognize a triangle even where its sides are not completely closed. To see how this whole (gestalt) is formed, you can use the material of the phenomenon described by the Danish gestalt psychologist Edgar Rubin - Rubin's vase (or "profiles and vase").

This picture with two profiles on the sides can be perceived as profiles, or it can be perceived as a vase. And when we see a vase, it seems to come forward at us, and the profiles disappear, turn into a background - the vase becomes a figure, a gestalt. And when we begin to perceive the profiles, then they already seem to come out on us, and the vase no longer exists - it is the background that is behind them.

On the basis of this law of formation of an integral figure - the so-called law of pregnancies, the law of integrity - it becomes clear that any mental organization will always be as good as the conditions of perception allow. Gestalt psychologists are beginning to formulate specific laws of perceptual organization that indicate the basis on which elements in the visual field are grouped, and are still used in design. Elements can be grouped based on proximity, based on similarity, based on good continuation, based on closeness or belonging to a common area.

Behind these laws of perceptual organization is the supposed "play" of forces in the phenomenal field, in the field of our consciousness, which forms gestalt, integrity. The idea of \u200b\u200borganization as opposed to the idea of \u200b\u200bsummation - the addition of separate elements - is key to Gestalt psychology.

The main question now in the focus of attention of modern Gestalt psychologists of perception: when does perceptual organization take place? In the early stages of information processing? In the later stages? Does it need attention? Or, first, the elements are organized and only then we direct our attention to the object that will already be obtained? And there are many such questions.

Development and research of gestalt psychology: Koehler, Dunker, Levin

Very soon after Wertheimer published his study of apparent motion, Wolfgang Köhler, another future founder of Gestalt psychology, was pursuing a seemingly distant research area: he studied problem solving by great apes. During the First World War, he worked on the island of Tenerife and studied how monkeys solve problems and get bait when they cannot get it just like that, but only with the help of some tool, such as a stick, or when they need to collect this tool from several pieces, or when you need to remove an obstacle or build a structure of several boxes to get to the banana hanging from the ceiling.

Before gestalt psychologists, it was believed that the behavior of animals in such a situation is subject to the rule of trial, error and accidental success. It was assumed that animals behave in a wide variety of ways, but only successful movements are reinforced and then fixed in the experience of the animal. But in order for this movement to be found, the animal must first move chaotically, twitch, rush in all directions.

But the monkeys in Kohler's experiments did not behave like that. At first they tried to do something, perhaps they got angry, and then they thought, froze and found a solution. For example, a monkey would grab a stick and move a banana toward him or drag boxes, put them one on top of the other, climb up and again take out a banana. And Koehler suggested that this phenomenon can only be explained by relying on the whole structure of the situation and on the concept of gestalt, that a situation in which there is a conflict between what we have and what we want (that is, between the conditions and requirements of the problem ), is not a holistic situation, not a gestalt, but a solved problem is a gestalt, a good, holistic configuration.

Then Karl Dunker transferred this to the solution of creative problems by a person, calling it a restructuring of the situation, a transition from a “bad” conflict structure to a “good”, holistic one, where the gap was eliminated. One of Duncker's main ideas was that solving a creative problem is always a restructuring of the initial situation, therefore, past experience, consisting of frozen "ready-made" structures, interferes with the solution of creative problems. This idea was opposed to all previous psychology, which tried to explain human thinking and solving problems through the use of past experience.

Such restructuring in Gestalt psychology began to be designated by another important term, which later became the property of everyday language with a slightly different meaning - the term "insight". Initially, in Kohler's experiments, insight was defined as an instantaneous change in behavior that leads to a solution to a problem. Then Karl Dunker, exploring the solution of small creative problems (we now call them "danets") in humans, defined insight as the restructuring of a problem situation, which leads to the elimination of the main conflict and the solution of the problem. But the initial idea is the same: in visual perception, thinking and problem solving, as well as in the work of memory and attention, the basic law is the principle of integrity or finding a "good configuration", gestalt. The Russian psychologist of the early twentieth century Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, who wrote a well-known work about the open crisis of psychology, wrote a little mockingly about this: "And God said: let there be a gestalt, and there was a gestalt." Indeed, when we take one explanatory concept and try to reduce everything to it, sometimes it is a stretch.

Gestalt psychology of perception developed quite rapidly until the 1940s: first, Wertheimer described the apparent movement (phi-phenomenon), then Kurt Koffka, the third founding father of Gestalt psychology, used the concept of the field and the forces acting in it, publishing the book Principles of Gestalt Psychology. Then Wolfgang Koehler, who had by this time stopped studying the thinking of great apes, introduced another important principle for gestalt psychology - the so-called principle of isomorphism (equality of forms). He suggested that the structure of the external world - the physical field - is isomorphic to electromagnetic processes in the brain and processes in our consciousness - the "phenomenal field." In other words, we can talk about "equality of forms" in the physical, physiological and phenomenal fields.

After that, Gestalt psychology of perception actually went into a sluggish mode: most of the leaders of Gestalt psychology were forced to flee from Germany to America due to the onset of Nazism, and in the 1950s a cognitive revolution broke out in the United States, and it turned out that Gestalt psychology was, in fact, inside cognitive psychology of perception. Although even now one can name several names of active gestalt psychologists.

Another direction in Gestalt psychology is associated with the name of Kurt Lewin, who tried to apply the ideas and principles of Gestalt psychology, but in his own interpretation - to the behavior of a person in the world around him. He considered human behavior as a function of his personality as a system of intense needs and the structure of the environment, to describe which he again used the concept of a field. He had the following ideas. Our personality at any given time is a changing, dynamic system of temporary needs. At one moment we need one thing, at another moment - another ... Levin called them quasi-needs, opposing the true ones, which we always have. These quasi-needs are correlated with objects of the surrounding world, which have one or another valence for us: they either attract us or repel us. The easiest way to catch these quasi-needs and valences is in a situation where a person owes nothing to anyone and does not want anything, for example, sitting in a laboratory and waiting for the start of an experiment. If you scatter all sorts of objects around him, say a bell, a pencil, or something else, then you can watch from around the corner how he will ring the bell, then twirl the pencil in his fingers, then take something else in his hands. Or if we are on the subway and see that a man in a black coat is standing in front of us with a white thread caught on it, it is terribly difficult to resist and not remove this thread.

Here Levin introduces the opposition of the so-called field behavior, which is controlled by the structure of the environment, and volitional behavior, behind which the personality stands. If a person can stand above the field, rise above it, then he can not remove the thread. But it is important that in any case, this entire system, which includes the personality and the environment, also strives for balance - just like gestalt in perception, just like conflicting, incomplete situations in thinking. And from this point of view, it turned out that this toolkit is very convenient for analyzing conflicts as such, because a conflict is the presence of two oppositely directed trends in behavior.

Conflicts in Gestalt Psychology

Kurt Lewin described the main types of conflicts, which later entered the field of conflict management as a golden fund. In fact, Levin became its ancestor. When are we in a state of conflict? For example, when we simultaneously want two different things: at the same time we want to sit at home and go to an exhibition, for example. We have two valence objects that are tearing us apart in different directions - this is a conflict of the type of double attraction. Or there may be a conflict of the type of double repulsion: I really don't want to do my homework, but I really don't want to get a deuce. The third type of conflict is simultaneous attraction and repulsion: for example, I really want to ask to play with some courtyard company, but it’s very scary that they will be driven away. Here we see that one and the same object has both a positive valence and a negative one, but it is necessary that one of these tendencies outweighs.

A person cannot stay in a state of conflict for too long. After Levin, another type of conflict was described - double attraction-repulsion, when there are two objects, both of which have both valences - this is, for example, the situation of a person who is trying to leave an old family and create a new one. Further, from these Gestalt psychological ideas, when applied to personality, socio-psychological theories began to grow. First, Fritz Haider proposed a theory of cognitive balance, suggesting that balance, equilibrium can be achieved in a person's head (in his cognition - hence the term "cognitive balance"), and not necessarily when interacting with the field, as Lewin assumed. Our mental life, according to this theory, strives for balance. If, for example, there is a certain person A who I like and person B who I like, I will be comfortable if they also like each other.

And if I love A and I love B, and A and B hate each other, I will get out of this situation by searching for a balance: either I will reconcile them, or I will start to treat A badly, or I will start to treat B. Such a configuration will become equilibrium. This theory did not get noticed very well: it was supplanted by the theory of cognitive dissonance, which was proposed by Leon Festinger. Ultimately, it all goes back to the same gestalt psychology. Festinger, through the idea of \u200b\u200bgetting rid of dissonance, that is, finding balance, finding a good configuration, tried to explain the motivation and behavior of a person, social groups, various social and psychological phenomena such as the spread of rumors, and so on. If we have two sources of information that contradict each other, then we need to do something either with one source of information, or with our attitude towards it, and ultimately, on the basis of this, all human behavior can be explained. For example, if a heavy smoker is persistently told that smoking is harmful, thereby creating cognitive dissonance (a mismatch between two perceptions), he can either quit smoking or devalue the source of information (for example, decide that he is being told so because they are envious), or start looking for opposite examples (cases where smokers lived happily ever after).

Advantages over other schools

There is one big advantage of Gestalt psychology over many other schools - it is an attempt to use a single explanatory principle that would cover all areas of reality. But, perhaps, this is also its drawback, because it turns out that when we say the magic word "gestalt", in the end we practically do not explain anything.

Currently, Gestalt psychology is rather a historical direction. Gestalt psychology of thinking as such has not remained, although specific research using its methodological tools is being carried out. Dynamic psychology of Kurt Lewin gave a lot of interesting results in research, but it actually spilled over with numerous modifications into the field of social psychology and now exists there.

Gestalt psychology of perception exists either very locally, or in synthesis with cognitive psychology. This is a rather discrete community, primarily in the United States, where there are individuals who use the apparatus of Gestalt psychology primarily in the field of perceiving configurations and highlighting a figure against the background (for example, Stephen Palmer, James Pomerantz, Israeli researcher of perception and attention Ruth Kimhi). Although in 2012, by the centenary of the publication of Wertheimer's work on the phi-phenomenon, a fairly large survey of modern studies of perception in the mainstream of Gestalt psychology by Johann Wagemans and colleagues came out. They also created the project GestaltRevision - an attempt to rehabilitate the principles of Gestalt psychology based on new knowledge about the work of the brain (http://www.gestaltrevision.be/en/).

The difference between gestalt psychology and gestalt therapy

There is a direction called "Gestalt therapy", which has a rather distant relationship to Gestalt psychology, with the exception that it is also based on the idea of \u200b\u200breorganization (restructuring) of a person's experience at a given moment in time, finding some equilibrium structure. Probably the most well-known technique of gestalt therapy is the so-called empty chair method. A person is given a chair, offered to imagine that he is sitting there, and to talk to himself and observe what happens to the person: when he has emotions, resistance, when he shows ardor, and so on.

Moreover, what is very important and in what Gestalt therapy opposes itself to psychoanalysis is the analysis of the current present situation, that is, what is happening here and now. Psychoanalysis is directed to the past, it is in the past that the problems of a person's current life are sought. Gestalt therapy always works with the present, and in this sense, it resonates with Gestalt psychology, when there is a structure of the field here and now. But Fritz Perls, who is considered the founder of Gestalt therapy, was not a Gestalt psychologist. He used some terms, first of all the beautiful word "gestalt", but the conceptual foundations were not taken from Gestalt psychology as a direction of psychology - this is just a set of techniques for working with the patient's current sense of self, bringing him to a stable, holistic state. Gestalt psychology as such tries to formulate general psychological laws: to explain cognition - perception, thinking, work of memory and attention on the basis of the principle of gestalt, holistic organization and structure; there are works on dynamic psychology that provide an explanation of situational human motivation and personality behavior. And apart from this, there is Gestalt therapy as a direction of psychological practice, using a certain set of techniques and attitudes, although, perhaps, colleagues working in this direction can correct me here. However, it is not Gestalt psychology at all, but Gestalt therapy is the first thing that comes to mind of a modern person when he hears the word "Gestalt".

Moscow City University of Psychology and Education

Faculty of Educational Psychology

Course work

on the course: General psychology

Gestalt Psychology: Basic Ideas and Facts

Student group (POVV) -31

Bashkina I.N.

Lecturer: Ph.D. in Science

Professor

T. M. Maryutina

Moscow, 2008

1.The emergence and development of gestalt psychology

1.1 General characteristics of Gestalt psychology

1.2 Basic ideas of gestalt psychology

2. The main ideas and facts of gestalt psychology

2.1 Postulates of M. Wertheimer

2.2 Kurt Lewin's Field Theory

Conclusion

Introduction

The present content of this work is devoted to Gestalt psychology, as one of the most influential and interesting areas of open crisis, which was a reaction against atomism and mechanism of all varieties of associative psychology.

Gestalt psychology was the most productive option for solving the problem of integrity in German and Austrian psychology, as well as in philosophy of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.

German psychologists M. Wertheimer (1880-1943), W. Koehler (1887-1967) and K. Koffka (1886-) are considered to be the founders of Gestalt psychology (from German Gestalt - image, structure), which arose as an opposition to structuralism with its atomistic understanding of consciousness. 1941), K. Levin (1890-1947).

These scientists established the following ideas of Gestalt psychology:

1. The subject of study of psychology is consciousness, but its understanding should be based on the principle of integrity.

2. Consciousness is a dynamic whole, that is, a field, each point of which interacts with all the others.

3. The unit of analysis of this field (ie, consciousness) is the gestalt - an integral figurative structure.

4. The method of researching gestalts - objective and direct observation and description of the content of their perception.

5. Perception cannot come from sensations, since the latter does not really exist.

6. Visual perception is the leading mental process that determines the level of development of the psyche, and has its own laws.

7. Thinking cannot be regarded as a set of skills formed by trial and error, but is a process of solving a problem, carried out through structuring the field, that is, through insight in the present, in a situation “here and now”. Past experience is irrelevant to the task at hand.

K. Levin developed the field theory and applying this theory, he studied personality and its phenomena: needs, will. The Gestalt approach has penetrated all areas of psychology. K. Goldstein applied it to the problems of pathopsychology, F. Perls - to psychotherapy, E. Maslow - to the theory of personality. The Gestalt approach has also been used with success in areas such as learning psychology, perceptual psychology, and social psychology.

1. The emergence and development of gestalt psychology

For the first time, the concept of "gestalt quality" was introduced by H. Ehrenfels in 1890 in the study of perceptions. He identified a specific sign of gestalt - the property of transposition (transfer). However, Ehrenfels did not develop the theory of gestalt and remained in the position of associationism.

A new approach towards holistic psychology was carried out by the psychologists of the Leipzig school (Felix Kruger (1874-1948), Hans Volkelt (1886-1964), Friedrich Sander (1889-1971), who created the school of developmental psychology, where the concept of complex quality was introduced , as a holistic experience permeated with feeling. This school existed from the late 10s, early 30s.

1.1 The history of the emergence of gestalt psychology

gestalt psychology psychology wertheimer levin

The history of Gestalt psychology begins in Germany in 1912 with the publication of M. Wertheimer's work "Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement" (1912), which questioned the usual idea of \u200b\u200bthe presence of individual elements in the act of perception.

Immediately after this, around Wertheimer, and especially in the 1920s, the Berlin school of Gestalt psychology was formed in Berlin: Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967), Kurt Koffka (1886-1941) and Kurt Lewin (1890 -1947). The studies covered perception, thinking, needs, affects, will.

W. Keller in his book "Physical structures at rest and stationary state" (1920) holds the idea that the physical world, like the psychological, is subject to the principle of gestalt. Gestaltists begin to go beyond psychology: all processes of reality are determined by the laws of Gestalt. An assumption was introduced about the existence of electromagnetic fields in the brain, which, having arisen under the influence of a stimulus, are isomorphic in the structure of the image. Isomorphism principle was considered by gestalt psychologists as an expression of the structural unity of the world - physical, physical, mental. The identification of uniform patterns for all spheres of reality made it possible, according to Koehler, to overcome vitalism. Vygotsky viewed this attempt as "an excessive approximation of the problems of the psyche to the theoretical constructions of the data of the latest physics" (*). Further research strengthened the new trend. Edgar Rubin (1881-1951) discovered figure and background phenomenon(1915). David Katz showed the role of Gestalt factors in the field of touch and color vision.

In 1921, Wertheimer, Koehler and Kofka, representatives of gestalt psychology, founded the journal Psychological Research (Psychologische Forschung). Here are the results of the research of this school. From this time on, the school began to influence world psychology. The generalizing articles of the 1920s were of great importance. M. Wertheimer: "Towards the Doctrine of Gestalt" (1921), "About Gestaltheory" (1925), K. Levin "Intentions, Will and Need". In 1929, Koehler gave lectures on Gestalt psychology in America, which were then published in the book "Gestalt Psychology" (Gestaltp-Psychology). This book is a systematic and perhaps the best presentation of this theory.

Fruitful research continued until the 1930s, when fascism came to Germany. Wertheimer and Koehler in 1933, Levin in 1935. emigrated to America. Here the development of Gestalt psychology in the field of theory did not receive significant progress.

By the 50s, interest in Gestalt psychology wanes. In the subsequent, however, the attitude towards Gestalt psychology changes.

Gestalt psychology had a great influence on the psychological science of the United States, on E. Tolman, American theories of learning. Recently, in a number of Western European countries, there has been an increase in interest in Gestalt theory and the history of the Berlin School of Psychology. In 1978, the International Psychological Society "Gestalt theory and its applications" was founded. the first issue of the journal "Gestalttheory", the official organ of this society, was published. The members of this society are psychologists from different countries of the world, primarily Germany (Z. Ertel, M. Stadler, G. Portele, K. Guss), the USA (R. Arnheim, A. Lachins, son of M. Wertheimer Michael Wertheimer and others ., Italy, Austria, Finland, Switzerland.

1.2 General characteristics of gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology investigated the holistic structures that make up the mental field, developing new experimental methods. And unlike other psychological directions (psychoanalysis, behaviorism), representatives of Gestalt psychology still believed that the subject of psychological science is the study of the content of the psyche, the analysis of cognitive processes, as well as the structure and dynamics of personality development.

The main idea of \u200b\u200bthis school was that the psyche is based not on individual elements of consciousness, but on integral figures - gestalts, the properties of which are not the sum of the properties of their parts. Thus, the previous idea that the development of the psyche is based on the formation of more and more associative links that connect individual elements to each other into representations and concepts was refuted. As Wertheimer emphasized, "... Gestalt theory arose from specific research ..." Instead, a new idea was put forward that cognition is associated with the process of change, transformation of integral gestalts, which determine the nature of perception of the external world and behavior in it. Therefore, many representatives of this trend paid more attention to the problem of mental development, since development itself was identified by them with the growth and differentiation of gestalts. Based on this, in the results of the study of the genesis of mental functions, they saw evidence of the correctness of their postulates.

The ideas developed by Gestalt psychologists were based on an experimental study of cognitive processes. It was also the first (and for a long time practically the only) school that began a strictly experimental study of the structure and qualities of a person, since the method of psychoanalysis used by depth psychology could not be considered either objective or experimental.

The methodological approach of Gestalt psychology was based on several foundations - the concept of a mental field, isomorphism and phenomenology. The concept of a field was borrowed by them from physics. The study in those years of the nature of the atom, magnetism, made it possible to reveal the laws of the physical field, in which the elements are arranged into integral systems. This idea became the leading one for Gestalt psychologists, who came to the conclusion that mental structures are located in the form of various schemes in the mental field. At the same time, the gestalts themselves can change, becoming more and more adequate to the objects of the external field. The field in which the old structures are located in a new way can also change, due to which the subject comes to a fundamentally new solution to the problem (insight).

Mental gestalts are isomorphic (similar) to physical and psychophysical. That is, the processes that occur in the cerebral cortex are similar to those that occur in the external world and are recognized by us in our thoughts and experiences, as similar systems in physics and mathematics (so a circle is isomorphic to an oval, not a square). Therefore, the scheme of the problem, which is given in an external field, can help the subject solve it faster or slower, depending on whether it makes it easier or more difficult to restructure it.

A person can become aware of his experiences, choose a path to solve his problems, but for this he needs to renounce past experience, to clear his consciousness of all layers associated with cultural and personal traditions. This phenomenological approach was borrowed by Gestalt psychologists from E. Husserl, whose philosophical concepts were extremely close to German psychologists. Associated with this was their underestimation of personal experience, the assertion of the priority of the momentary situation, the principle of "here and now" in any intellectual processes. This is related to the discrepancy in the results of their study by behaviorists and gestalt psychologists, since the former proved the correctness of the "trial and error" method, that is, the influence of past experience, which was denied by the latter. The only exceptions were the personality studies conducted by K. Levin, in which the concept of time perspective was introduced, however, taking into account mainly the future, the purpose of activity, and not past experience.

In the studies of the scientists of this school, almost all the currently known properties of perception were discovered, the significance of this process in the formation of thinking, imagination, and other cognitive functions was proved. For the first time, the figurative-schematic thinking they described made it possible to present the whole process of forming ideas about the environment in a new way, proved the importance of images and schemes in the development of creativity, revealing the important mechanisms of creative thinking. Thus, the cognitive psychology of the twentieth century is largely based on the discoveries made in this school, as well as in the school of J. Piaget.

Levin's works, which will be discussed in more detail below, are of no less importance, both for personality psychology and for social psychology. Suffice it to say that his ideas and programs, outlined by him in the study of these areas of psychology, are still relevant and have not exhausted themselves almost sixty years after his death.

2. Basic ideas and facts of Gestalt psychology

2.1 Research of the process of cognition. Works by M. Wertheimer, W. Koehler, K. Koffka

One of the leading representatives of this trend was Max Wertheimer. After graduating from university, he studied philosophy in Prague and then in Berlin. Acquaintance with H. Ehrenfels, who first introduced the concept of gestalt quality, influenced Wertheimer's studies. Having moved to Würzburg, he worked in the laboratory of O. Kühlpe, under whose guidance he defended his dissertation in 1904. However, moving away from the explanatory principles of the Würzburg school, he leaves Külpe, starting research that led him to substantiate the provisions of the new psychological school.

In 1910, at the Psychological Institute in Frankfurt am Main, he meets Wolfgang Koehler and Kurt Koffka, who first become subjects in Wertheimer's experiments in the study of perception, and then his friends and colleagues, in collaboration with whom the main provisions of the new psychological direction were developed - gestalt psychology. Moving to the University of Berlin, Wertheimer is engaged in teaching and research activities, paying considerable attention to the study of thinking and substantiating the basic principles of Gestalt psychology, which are set forth in the journal Psychological Research, which he founded (together with Kohler and Koffka). In 1933, like Levin, Koehler and Koffka, he had to leave Nazi Germany. After emigrating to the United States, he worked at the New School for Social Research in New York, but he failed to create a new association of like-minded people.

The first works of Wertheimer were devoted to the experimental study of visual perception.

Let us dwell on this study in more detail. Using a tachistoscope, he exposed two stimuli (lines or curves) one after the other at different speeds. When the interval between presentations was relatively long, the subjects perceived stimuli sequentially, and with a very short interval, they were perceived as data simultaneously. When exposed at the optimal interval (about 60 milliseconds), the subjects developed a perception of movement, that is, it seemed to them that one object was moving from one point to another, while they were presented with two objects located at different points. At a certain moment, the subjects began to perceive pure movement, that is, they were not aware that movement was taking place, but without the object moving. This phenomenon has been named phi phenomenon... This special term was introduced in order to highlight the uniqueness of this phenomenon, its irreducibility to the sum of sensations, and Wertheimer recognized the physiological basis of this phenomenon as a “short circuit” that occurs when there is an appropriate time interval between two brain zones. The results of this work were presented in the article "Experimental Studies of Apparent Motion", which was published in 1912.

The data obtained in these experiments stimulated the criticism of associationism and laid the foundations for a new approach to perception (and then to other mental processes), which Wertheimer substantiated together with W. Keller, K. Koffka, K. Levin.

Thus, the principle of integrity was put forward as the main principle of the formation of the psyche, as opposed to the associative principle of elements, from which images and concepts are formed according to certain laws. Justifying the leading principles of Gestalt psychology, Wertheimer wrote that “there are connections in which what happens as a whole is not deduced from the elements that supposedly exist in the form of separate pieces, then connected together, but, on the contrary, what is manifested in a separate parts of this whole, is determined by the internal structural law of this whole. "

Studies of perception, and then thinking, carried out by Wertheimer, Koffka and other gestalt psychologists, made it possible to discover the basic laws of perception, which eventually became the general laws of any gestalt. These laws explained the content of mental processes by the entire “field” of stimuli acting on the body, by the structure of the entire situation as a whole, which makes it possible to correlate and structure individual images with each other, while maintaining their basic form. At the same time, the ratio of images of objects in consciousness was not static, motionless, but was determined by dynamic, changing relationships that are established in the process of cognition.

In further research by Wertheimer and his colleagues, a large amount of experimental data was obtained, which made it possible to establish the basic postulates of Gestalt psychology, formulated in the programmatic article of Wertheimer "Research related to the doctrine of Gestalt" (1923). The main one was that the primary data of psychology are integral structures (gestalts), which, in principle, cannot be derived from their constituent components. The elements of the field are combined into a structure depending on such relationships as proximity, similarity, isolation, symmetry. There are a number of other factors on which the perfection and stability of a figure or structural union depends - rhythm in the construction of rows, the commonality of light and color, etc. The action of all these factors obeys the basic law, called by Wertheimer the “law of pregnancies” (or the law of “good” form), which is interpreted as a tendency (even at the level of electrochemical processes in the cerebral cortex) to simple and clear forms and simple and stable states.

Considering perceptual processes innate, and explaining them by the peculiarities of the organization of the cerebral cortex, Wertheimer came to the conclusion about isomorphism (one-to-one correspondence) between physical, physiological and psychological systems, that is, external, physical gestalts correspond to neurophysiological ones, and with them, in turn , mental images are correlated. Thus, the necessary objectivity was introduced, which turned psychology into an explanatory science.

In the mid-twenties, Wertheimer switched from the study of perception to the study of thinking. The result of these experiments is the book "Productive Thinking", which was published after the death of the scientist in 1945 and is one of his most significant achievements.

Studying the methods of transforming cognitive structures using a large empirical material (experiments with children and adult subjects, conversations, including with A. Einstein), Wertheimer comes to the conclusion that not only the associative, but also the formal logical approach to thinking is inconsistent. Both approaches, he stressed, conceal his productive, creative character, which is expressed in the “re-centering” of the source material, its reorganization into a new dynamic whole. The terms “reorganization, grouping, centering”, introduced by Wertheimer, described the real moments of intellectual work, emphasizing its specifically psychological side, different from the logical one.

In his analysis of problem situations and ways to solve them, Wertheimer identifies several main stages of the thought process:

1. The emergence of the topic. At this stage, a feeling of “directed tension” arises, which mobilizes the creative forces of a person.

2. Analysis of the situation, awareness of the problem. The main task of this stage is to create a holistic image of the situation.

3. Solving the problem. This mental process is largely unconscious, although prior conscious work is necessary.

4. The emergence of the idea of \u200b\u200ba solution - insight.

5. Performing stage.

In the experiments of Wertheimer, the negative influence of the habitual way of perceiving the structural relations between the components of the problem on its productive solution was found. He emphasized that it is incomparably more difficult for children who studied geometry at school on the basis of a purely formal method to develop a productive approach to problems than for those who did not study at all.

The book also describes the processes of significant scientific discoveries (Gauss, Galileo) and provides unique conversations with Einstein devoted to the problem of creativity in science and the analysis of the mechanisms of creative thinking. The result of this analysis is the conclusion made by Wertheimer about the fundamental structural commonality of the mechanisms of creativity among primitive peoples, among children and among great scientists.

He also argued that creative thinking depends on a drawing, a diagram in the form of which the condition of a task or problem situation is presented. The correctness of the solution depends on the adequacy of the scheme. This process of creating different gestalts from a set of permanent images is the process of creativity, and the more different meanings the objects included in these structures receive, the higher the level of creativity the child will demonstrate. Since such restructuring is easier to perform on figurative rather than on verbal material, Wertheimer came to the conclusion that an early transition to logical thinking interferes with the development of creativity in children. He also said that exercise kills creative thinking, since during repetition, the same image is fixed and the child gets used to looking at things in only one position.

The scientist pays considerable attention to the problems of ethics and morality of the researcher's personality, emphasizing that the formation of these qualities should also be taken into account in teaching, and the teaching itself should be structured so that children receive joy from it, realizing the joy of discovering something new. These studies were aimed primarily at the study of "visual" thinking and were of a general nature.

The data obtained in Wertheimer's studies led Gestalt psychologists to the conclusion that perception is the leading mental process, especially at the initial stages of ontogenesis.

The study of its development was mainly carried out by K. Koffka, who strove to combine genetic psychology and Gestalt psychology. He, like Wertheimer, graduated from the University of Berlin and then worked under the direction of Stumpf, writing his doctoral dissertation on the perception of musical rhythm (1909).

In his book "Foundations of Mental Development" (1921), and other works, Koffka argued that the way a child perceives the world depends on his behavior and understanding of the situation. He came to this conclusion because he believed that the process of mental development is the growth and differentiation of gestalts. This opinion was shared by other Gestalt psychologists. Studying the process of perception, Gestalt psychologists argued that its basic properties appear gradually, with the maturation of gestalts. So there is constancy and correctness of perception, as well as its meaningfulness.

Studies of the development of perception in children, which were carried out in Koffka's laboratory, showed that a child is born with a set of vague and not very adequate images of the external world. Gradually in the process of life, these images are differentiated and become more and more accurate. So at birth, children have a vague image of a person, whose gestalt includes his voice, face, hair, and characteristic movements. Therefore, a small child (1-2 months) may not even recognize a close adult if he dramatically changes his hairstyle or changes his usual clothes to completely unfamiliar ones. However, by the end of the first half of the year, this vague image is fragmented, turning into a series of clear images: an image of a face, in which eyes, mouth, hair stand out as separate gestalts, and images of a voice and body appear.

Koffka's research has shown that color perception also develops. In the beginning, children perceive their surroundings only as colored or uncolored, without distinguishing between colors. In this case, the unpainted is perceived as a background, and the colored one as a figure. Gradually, the colored is divided into warm and cold, and in the environment, children already distinguish several sets of figure-background. These are unpainted - colored warm, unpainted - colored cold, which are perceived as several different images, for example: colored cold (background) - colored warm (figure) or colored warm (background) - colored cold (figure). Based on these experimental data, Koffka came to the conclusion that the combination of the figure and the background on which the given object is demonstrated plays an important role in the development of perception.

He argued that the development of color vision is based on the perception of the figure-background combination, on their contrast. Later this law, which received the name transposition law, was also proved by Koehler. This law stated that people do not perceive the colors themselves, but their relationships... So in Koffka's experiment, the children were asked to find a candy that was in one of two cups covered with colored cardboard. The candy was always in a cup, which was covered with a dark gray cardboard, while there was never a black candy underneath. In the control experiment, the children had to choose not between black and dark gray caps, as they used to, but between dark gray and light gray. In the event that they perceived a pure color, they would have chosen the usual dark gray cover, but the children chose a light gray, as they were guided not by the pure color, but by the color ratio, choosing a lighter shade. A similar experiment was carried out with animals (chickens), which also perceived only combinations of colors, and not the color itself.

Koffka summarized the results of his research on perception in his work Principles of Gestalt Psychology (1935). This book describes the properties and process of formation of perception, on the basis of which the scientist formulated a theory of perception, which has not lost its significance at the present time.

Another scientist (representative of the Leipzig group of gestalt psychologists) G. Volkelt was engaged in the study of the development of perception in children. He paid special attention to the study of children's drawings. Of great interest are his experiments on the study of drawing geometric figures by children of different ages. So when drawing a cone, 4-5 year old children drew a circle and a triangle next to it. Volkelt explained this by the fact that they do not yet have an image adequate to the given figure, and therefore in the drawing they use two similar gestalts. Over time, they are integrated and refined, due to which children begin to draw not only flat, but also three-dimensional figures. Volkelt also carried out a comparative analysis of the drawings of those objects that the children saw and those that they did not see, but only felt. At the same time, it turned out that in the case when children touched, for example, a cactus covered with a scarf, they painted only thorns, conveying their general feeling of the object, and not its shape. That is, as the gestalt psychologists proved, the grasping of the integral image of the object, its form, and then its enlightenment and differentiation, took place. These studies of Gestalt psychologists were of great importance for domestic work on the study of visual perception at the Zaporozhets school, and led the psychologists of this school (Zaporozhets, Wenger) to the idea that in the process of perception there are certain images - sensory standards that underlie perception and recognition of objects.

The same transition from grasping the general situation to its differentiation occurs in intellectual development, argued V. Kohler. He began his scientific career at the University of Berlin, studying with the famous psychologist, one of the founders of European functionalism, K. Stumpf. Along with the psychological, he received a physics and mathematics education, his teacher was the creator of the theory of quanta Max Planck.

After meeting with Max Wertheimer, Koehler becomes one of his ardent supporters and associate in developing the foundations of a new psychological direction. Several months before the outbreak of World War I, Kohler, at the suggestion of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, went to the Spanish island of Tenerife (in the Canary Islands) to study the behavior of chimpanzees. His research formed the basis of his famous book "A Study of the Intelligence of Great Apes" (1917). After the war, Koehler returned to the University of Berlin, where other members of the scientific community - Wertheimer, Koffka, Lewin - also worked at that time, heading the department of psychology, which had been occupied by his teacher K. Stumpf before him. Thus, the University of Berlin becomes the center of Gestalt psychology. In 1933, Koehler, like many other German scientists, emigrated to the United States, where he continued his scientific work.

Kohler's early work on the intelligence of chimpanzees led him to his most significant discovery - the discovery of "insight" (insight).Based on the fact that intellectual behavior is aimed at solving a problem, Koehler created situations in which the experimental animal had to find workarounds to achieve the goal. The operations that the monkeys performed to solve the problem were called "two-phase", as they consisted of two parts. In the first part, the monkey had to use one tool to get another, which was necessary to solve the problem - for example, with the help of a short stick that was in the cage, get a long one, located at some distance from the cage. In the second part, the resulting weapon was used to achieve the desired goal - for example, to obtain a banana far from the monkey.

The question to which the experiment answered was to find out how the problem is being solved - whether there is a blind search for the right solution (by the type of trial and error) or the monkey achieves the goal due to spontaneous grasping of relations, understanding. Kohler's experiments proved that the thought process follows the second path. Explaining the phenomenon of "insight" he argued that at the moment when phenomena enter another situation they acquire a new function. The combination of objects in new combinations associated with their new functions leads to the formation of a new gestalt, the awareness of which is the essence of thinking. Kohler called this process "restructuring of gestalt" and believed that such restructuring occurs instantly and does not depend on the subject's past experience, but only on the way objects are positioned in the field. It is this “restructuring” that occurs at the moment of “insight”.

Proving the universality of the problem-solving process that he discovered, Kohler, on his return to Germany, conducted a series of experiments to study the process of thinking in children. He offered children a similar problematic situation. For example, children were asked to get a typewriter, which was located high on the closet. In order to get it, the children had to use different objects - a ladder, a box or a chair. It turned out that if there was a staircase in the room, the children quickly solved the proposed problem. It was more difficult if it was necessary to guess how to use a box, but the greatest difficulty was caused by the option where there was only a chair in the room, which had to be moved away from the table and used as a stand. Koehler explained these results by the fact that the ladder from the very beginning is perceived as an object that helps to reach something located high. Therefore, its inclusion in the gestalt with the wardrobe does not present any difficulties for the child. The inclusion of the box already needs some rearrangement, since it can be realized in several functions, as for the chair, the child is aware of it already included in another gestalt - with the table with which it appears to the child as a single whole. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, children must first split the first holistic image - a table-chair into two, and then combine the chair with the cabinet in a new image, realizing its new role. That is why this option is the most difficult to solve.

Thus, Kohler's experiments proved the instantaneous, rather than extended in time, nature of thinking, which is based on "insight." Somewhat later, K. Buhler, who came to a similar conclusion, called this phenomenon "aha-experience", also emphasizing its suddenness and simultaneity.

The concept of "insight" became the key to Gestalt psychology, it became the basis for explaining all forms of mental activity, including productive thinking, as was shown in the works of Wertheimer, which were mentioned above.

Kohler's further research was related to the problem of isomorphism. Studying this issue, he came to the conclusion that it is necessary to analyze the physical and physicochemical processes occurring in the cerebral cortex. Isomorphism, that is, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe correspondence between the physical, physiological and psychological systems, made it possible to bring consciousness into conformity with the physical world, without depriving it of its independent value. External, physical gestalts correspond to neurophysiological ones, with which, in turn, psychological images and concepts are associated.

The study of isomorphism led him to the discovery of new laws of perception - meaning ( objectivity of perception) and the relative perception of colors in a pair ( transposition law), outlined by him in the book "Gestalt Psychology" (1929). However, the theory of isomorphism remained the weakest and most vulnerable point not only of his concept, but also of Gestalt psychology in general.

2.2 Dynamic theory of personality and group K. Levin

The theory of the German psychologist K. Levin (1890-1947) was influenced by the successes of the exact sciences - physics, mathematics. The beginning of the century was marked by discoveries in field physics, atomic physics, and biology. Having become interested in psychology at the university, Levin tried to introduce the accuracy and rigor of the experiment into this science. In 1914, Levin received his doctorate. Having received an invitation to teach psychology at the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin, he becomes close to Koffka, Koehler and Wertheimer, the founders of Gestalt psychology. However, unlike his colleagues, Levin focuses not on the study of cognitive processes, but on the study of human personality. After emigrating to the United States, Levin teaches at Stanford and Cornell Universities. During this period, he mainly deals with problems of social psychology and in 1945 he headed the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Levin developed his theory of personality in the mainstream of Gestalt psychology, giving it the name " psychological field theory". He proceeded from the fact that a person lives and develops in the psychological field of surrounding objects, each of which has a certain charge (valence). Levin's experiments proved that for each person this valence has its own sign, although at the same time there are such objects that have an equally attractive or repulsive force for everyone.Acting on a person, objects cause needs in him, which Levin considered as a kind of energy charges that cause tension in a person.In this state, a person seeks to discharge, that is, to satisfy needs.

Levin distinguished between two kinds of needs - biological and social (quasi-needs). The needs for the structure of the personality are not isolated, they are in connection with each other, in a certain hierarchy. Moreover, those quasi-needs that are interconnected can exchange the energy they contain. Levin called this process the communication of charged systems. The ability to communicate, from his point of view, is valuable because it makes a person's behavior more flexible, allows him to resolve conflicts, overcome various barriers and find a satisfactory way out of difficult situations. This flexibility is achieved through a complex system of substitute actions that are formed on the basis of related needs. Thus, a person is not tied to a specific action or method of solving a situation, but can change them, relieving the tension that has arisen in him. This expands its adaptive capabilities.

In one of Levin's studies, children were asked to complete a specific task, such as helping an adult wash the dishes. As a reward, the child received some kind of prize that was meaningful to him. In a control experiment, an adult invited a child to help him, but at the moment when the child came, it turned out that someone had already washed everything in court. Children tended to get upset, especially if they were told that someone of their age was ahead of them. Aggressive manifestations were also frequent. At this point, the experimenter suggested performing another task, implying that it was also significant. Most of the kids switched instantly. There was a release of resentment and aggression in another type of activity. But some children could not quickly form a new need and adapt to a new situation, and therefore their anxiety and aggressiveness grew.

Levin comes to the conclusion that not only neuroses, but also the features of cognitive processes (such phenomena as retention, forgetting) are associated with the release or tension of needs.

Levin's studies proved that not only the current situation, but also its anticipation, objects that exist only in a person's consciousness, can determine his activity. The presence of such ideal motives of behavior enables a person to overcome the direct influence of the field, surrounding objects, "to stand above the field," as Levin wrote. He called such behavior strong-willed, in contrast to the field, which arises under the influence of the immediate immediate environment. Thus, Levin comes to the concept of time perspective, which is important for him, which determines the behavior of a person in living space and is the basis of an integral perception of himself, his past and future.

The emergence of a time perspective makes it possible to overcome the pressure of the surrounding field, which is important in those cases when a person is in a situation of choice. Demonstrating the difficulty for a young child to overcome the strong pressure of the field, Levin conducted several experiments, and these were included in his film Hana Sits on a Rock. This is a story about a girl who could not take her eyes off the object she liked, and this prevented her from getting it, since she had to turn her back on him.

The system of educational methods, in particular, punishments and rewards, is of great importance for the formation of a child's personality. Levin believed that when punished for not doing something unpleasant for a child, children find themselves in a situation of frustration, since they are between two barriers (objects with negative valence). The system of punishment, from Levin's point of view, does not contribute to the development of volitional behavior, but only increases the tension and aggressiveness of children. The reward system is more positive, since in this case the barrier (after the object with negative valence) is followed by the object that evokes positive emotions. However, the optimal one is a system in which children are given the opportunity to build a time perspective in order to remove the barriers of the given field.

Levin created a series of interesting psychological techniques. The first of them was suggested by the observation in one of the Berlin restaurants of the behavior of the waiter, who well remembered the amount owed from the visitors, but immediately forgot it after the bill was paid. Believing that in this case the numbers are retained in memory thanks to the "stress system" and disappear with its discharge, Levin suggested to his student BV Zeigarnik to experimentally investigate the differences in memorizing unfinished and completed actions. Experiments confirmed his prediction. The first ones were remembered approximately two times better. A number of other phenomena have also been studied. All of them were explained on the basis of a general postulate about the dynamics of stress in the psychological field.

The principle of discharging motivational tension was at the heart of both the behaviorist concept and Freud's psychoanalysis.

K. Levy's approach was distinguished by two points.

First, he moved away from the idea that the energy of a motive is closed within the organism, to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe "organism-environment" system. The individual and his environment appeared as an inseparable dynamic whole.

Second, Levin believed that motivational stress can be created both by the individual himself and by other people (for example, the experimenter). Thus, the actual psychological status was recognized as the motivation and it was not limited only to the satisfaction of their biological needs.

This opened the way to new methods of studying motivation, in particular the level of personality claims, determined by the degree of difficulty of the goal to which it strives. Levin showed the need for not only a holistic, but also an adequate understanding of oneself as a person. His discovery of such concepts as the level of aspirations and the "affect of inadequacy", which manifests itself when trying to prove to a person that his ideas about himself are wrong, played a huge role in personality psychology, in understanding the causes of deviating behavior. Levin emphasized that both an overestimated and an underestimated level of claims have a negative impact on behavior, since in both cases the possibility of establishing a stable equilibrium with the environment is violated.

Conclusion

Finally, in conclusion, let us dwell on the general assessment of Gestalt psychology.

Gestalt psychology is a psychological trend that arose in Germany in the early 10s and existed until the mid 30s. XX century. (before the Nazis came to power, when most of its representatives emigrated) and continued to develop the problem of integrity posed by the Austrian school. First of all, M. Wertheimer, W. Koehler, K. Koffka, K. Levin belong to this direction. The methodological basis of Gestalt psychology was the philosophical ideas of "critical realism" and the provisions developed by E. Goering, E. Mach, E. Husserl, I. Müller, according to which the physiological reality of processes in the brain and the mental, or phenomenal, are connected with each other by relations of isomorphism.

By analogy with electromagnetic fields in physics, consciousness in Gestalt psychology was understood as a dynamic whole, a “field” in which each point interacts with all the others.

For the experimental study of this field, a unit of analysis was introduced, which became the gestalt. Gestalts were found in the perception of form, apparent movement, optical-geometric illusions.

Vygotsky assessed the structural principle introduced by Gestalt psychology in the sense of the new approach as "the great unshakable conquest of theoretical thought." This is the essence and historical meaning of Gestalt theory.

Among other achievements of Gestalt psychologists, it should be noted: the concept of "psychophysical isomorphism" (the identity of the structures of mental and nervous processes); the concept of “learning through insight” (insight is a sudden understanding of the situation as a whole); a new concept of thinking (a new object is perceived not in its absolute meaning, but in its connection and comparison with other objects); the idea of \u200b\u200b"productive thinking" (ie creative thinking as the antipode of reproductive, template memorization); identification of the phenomenon of "pregnancies" (good form in itself becomes a motivating factor).

In the 20s. XX century. K. Levin expanded the scope of Gestalt psychology by introducing a "personal dimension".

The Gestalt approach has penetrated all areas of psychology. K. Goldstein applied it to the problems of pathopsychology, E. Maslow - to the theory of personality. The Gestalt approach has also been used with success in areas such as learning psychology, perceptual psychology, and social psychology.

Gestalt psychology has had a significant impact on non-behaviorism, cognitive psychology,

The theory of Gestalt psychology, mainly the interpretation of the intellect in it, was the subject of special consideration in the works of Piaget.

Gestalt psychology has found application in the field of psychotherapeutic practice. One of the most widespread areas of modern psychotherapy, gestalt therapy, founded by F. Perls (1893-1970), is based on its general principles.

Hence, it is clear what a huge contribution Gestalt psychology made to the further development of world science.

List of used literature

1. Antsiferova LI, Yaroshevsky MG Development and current state of foreign psychology. M., 1994.

2. Wertheimer M. Productive thinking. M., 1987.

3. Vygotsky L.S. Collected works in 6 volumes, Moscow, 1982.

4. Zhdan A.N. History of Psychology: from Antiquity to the Present. M., 1999.

5. Kehler V. Research of the intelligence of humanoid apes. M., 1999.

6. Levin K, Dembo, Festfinger L, Sire P. The level of claims. Psychology of Personality. Texts), Moscow, 1982.

7. Levin K. Field theory in social sciences. SPb., 2000.

8. Martsinkovskaya T. D. History of psychology., M. Academy, 2004.

9. Petrovsky A. V., Yaroshevsky M. G. History and theory of psychology. In 2 volumes. Rostov-on-Don, 1996.

10. Rubinstein S.L. Fundamentals of General Psychology. M. Peter. 2008.

11. Yaroshevsky MG History of psychology. M., 2000.

12. Schultz D, Schultz S.E. History of modern psychology. SPb, 1998

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