Early Psychology: Learn It 6—Gestalt Psychology

An ambiguous drawing looks like a duck facing to the left but also looks like a rabbit facing to the right.
Figure 1. When you look at this image, you may see a duck or a rabbit. The sensory information remains the same, but your perception can vary dramatically.

Gestalt Psychology

In the early 20th century, psychology was expanding across Europe and America, with different schools of thought emerging. One of the most influential was Gestalt psychology, founded in Germany by Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) along with Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), and Kurt Lewin (1890–1947).

Gestalt psychologists opposed the narrow focus of Wundt’s structuralism. Instead, they argued that experience should be studied as a whole, not as a sum of separate parts.

gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology is an early school of psychology founded in Germany that emphasized studying the mind and behavior as a whole rather than breaking experience into parts.

  • The famous phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” captures the Gestalt perspective.
    • Example: A song is not just notes and instruments—it is perceived through the melody, rhythm, and harmony created by combining them.
  • Similarly, when looking at an image, we perceive a whole picture, not just individual pixels.
 
Gestalt image of showing a triangle with gaps in the middle of each side. On the exterior of the triangle, three circles leave out a small piece, making it appear as though there is a second triangle superimposed on the first, although it is really just the negative space.
Figure 2. The “invisible” triangle you see here is an example of gestalt perception.

Gestalt psychologists also studied learning and thinking, showing that the mind often processes information simultaneously rather than step by step. Their work directly challenged structuralism and helped lay the groundwork for cognitive psychology in America.

Because many Gestalt psychologists were Jewish, they fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In the U.S., they introduced new ideas about perception, learning, and problem-solving that reshaped psychology.

Psychology Spreads Around the World

Although the establishment of psychology’s scientific roots occurred first in Europe and the United States, it did not take much time until researchers from around the world began to establish their own laboratories and research programs. Out of Germany, the study of psychology spread to France, Great Britain, Switzerland, and beyond. The field eventualy spread globally, where it is practiced worldwide today: 

  • Argentina: In the late 1890s, Horatio Piñero (1869–1919) established some of South America’s first psychology labs in Buenos Aires.

  • Japan: After studying with G. Stanley Hall, Motora Yuzero (1858–1912) opened Japan’s first psychology lab in 1903 at Tokyo Imperial University. By the mid-20th century, Japan had developed strong programs in educational, clinical, and industrial-organizational psychology.

  • China: Psychology emerged in the early 20th century, but political upheavals—including the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976)—interrupted progress. Afterward, psychology revived and expanded into many subfields.

  • India: Drawing on both traditional philosophy and Western psychology, Indian scholars developed an Indigenous psychology. Pioneers like Narendra Nath Sen Gupta (1889–1944) at the University of Calcutta and Gunamudian David Boaz (1908–1965) at the University of Madras established the first independent psychology departments.

Across Asia and Latin America, psychology developed in conversation with local culture, identity, and modernization, blending global theories with regional traditions.