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The Whole is More than a Summary of its Parts. – Gestalt Theory

Typically viewed as its own psychological school, Gestalt psychology has much in common with H-E psychology. Gestalt psychology emerged as a school of psychology in Austria and Germany in the early twentieth century as a theory of perception that rejected the elementalism theories of Wilhelm Wundt and the structuralist theories of Edward Titchener.

Gestalt in German means “form, pattern, configuration, or wholeness.” Gestalt psychologists were interested in how humans perceived entire patterns and not merely individual elements of human experience. Like Kant, Gestalt psychologists distinguished sensation from perception. Sensations were physical reactions whereas perceptions were psychological responses. Gestalt psychologists replaced the mind with the brain as the altering agent because the world perceived was never the same as the world experienced through the senses. Gestalt psychologists changed the Kantian faculties of the mind with characteristics of the brain.