What Is a Multidimensional Lens?

An Introduction to Gestalt Theory

The Gestalt theory is a psychological theory developed by the German psychologist Max Wertheimer in the early 20th century. It posits that objects are perceived as a whole, and that cognition is based on patterns and relations rather than individual parts. In some ways this is strongly resonant with Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Relational philosophy.

The Gestalt theory helps us understand how we understand things. It offers an insight into why we perceive things as awareness and not as mechanical stimuli.

Gestalt refers to any grouping of objects that appears holistic when in deterministic reality they are composed of many different parts or shapes: the mind groups individual parts into unified wholes.

The Gestalt Theory of Perception

Gestalt theory of perception is a theory that concentrates on how human beings perceive the world. It is the term given to a person’s experience of the whole in terms of their individual perceptions.

The Gestalt Theory states that there are three basic principles of perception: similarity, proximity, and continuity. Similarity means that we perceive things as being more alike than they really are and we perceive things as similar to us. Proximity means that we see things near us better than we see them at a distance. Continuity means that our eyes see all parts in one piece or whole rather than broken up into unrelated pieces or different objects.

The Gestalt Theory of Perception states that the human brain is capable of perceiving everything in our fields of vision. It can create an image based on a combination of natural and artificial stimuli.

The Gestalt Theory in Different Contexts

Gestalt theory has been applied in many different contexts across a broad range of fields.

As our technology advances, our contextual definitions of awareness may change too. The Gestalt Theory is still relevant to our lives today and the foundations of underlying perception will persist but the verbal technology assisting the expression of our awareness (what we believe we are aware of) are already undergoing readjustment for new contexts such as virtual and augmented reality.

Gestalt therapy and Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt therapy and Gestalt Psychology came from the German word “Gestalt” which means shape, form or pattern. The theory of Gestalt psychology was introduced by Max Wertheimer in 1912 and further developed by Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, and Kurt Lewin.

The theory of Gestalt psychology is resonant with a modernistic concept of psychological Complexity theory, and as such con be built on two main assumptions:

1) “a whole is different than the sum of its parts”; this means that it is necessary to look at the concept as a whole to understand how it works.

2) “the mind organizes experience into units that we perceive as meaningful wholes”

Gestalt therapy is a psychotherapy which is founded in the idea of “unitary wholes.” It comes with the understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This idea can be illustrated by what’s known as “the figure-ground illusion,” where our perception is only able to see one complete thing at a time.

The Gestalt psychologists believed that when there’s an interruption in what we perceive, it causes anxiety and stress. They also thought that when things are presented close together, they’re perceived to be related in some way.

Gestalt therapy involves bringing back feelings of wholeness and unity through awareness of our surroundings and body sensations. It helps us to understand how our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are interconnected.

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Gestalt Therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach which emphasizes the client’s central role in psychological healing and growth through the process of self-exploration and insight.

It is a relatively new technique, emerging in the years after World War II. It is based on the concepts that all people are whole and that they can be helped to move towards healthier and more satisfying patterns of behavior and emotional experience.

The Gestalt therapists believe that the tendency to see things as parts rather than wholes is self fragmenting and mechanistic (as in defense mechanism); some objects recede into the mere background while others stand out distinctly in the foreground. The idea is that either foreground or background can be changed- however it helps us to think about the situation. Gestalt therapy can be used for a variety of purposes such as letting go of old relationships and patterns, enhancing creativity and problem solving, healing trauma and resolving depression.

Gestalt therapy emphasizes the subjective nature of experience. “Subjective experience is what you are experiencing now, not how your therapist interprets your experience.”

Gestalt therapy focuses on understanding and working with the client as he or she is, as opposed to interpreting the client and telling him or her what they should be doing. This approach avoids blame and guilt by removing some of the responsibility from the client and onto the therapist instead.

The goal of gestalt therapy is to empower clients and help them find their own solutions to their problems.

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According to Gestalt Psychology, human beings are holistic units which are created through awareness. People always interact with their environment with their past experiences and knowledge in mind. Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the importance of all perceptions as complex wholes rather than breaking them down into parts.

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Gestalt: Self and External World

The Gestalt psychologists were interested in how and why we see things as organized patterns and meaningful wholes. We tend to see patterns and wholes that fit into our expectations of what should be there, instead of seeing things as disorganized parts. We can group objects together based on common properties such as color, shape, or texture. This gives our perception meaning, assisting our awareness of the world.

As we perceive the world around us, we form an idea about what it looks like based on what we’ve seen before and what we know about other similar objects and environments. This helps define our conceptual understanding of place, purpose, and personhood.

Gestalt psychologists theorized that the human mind strives to interpret raw experiences in a way that provides maximum meaning and order. They called this tendency to see patterns of organization “good contact” or “clear bright figure.” For example, we see a line drawing of an elephant with its head sticking out of the top of a box as “an elephant in a box.”

We also have what they call an “empty background” which is just our assumption of what’s not seen. Gestaltists called this boundary between what we imagine and what we perceive the contact boundary.

Gestalt: Reality, Emergence, and Evaluation

Gestalt theory in psychology proposes that the human mind forms simple global patterns out of complex arrays of information.

Domination and self regulation: Dominance is a form of regulation that occurs when one stimulus has an effect on the other to such an extent that it completely overrides any other stimuli. Self-regulation is a type of regulation where a stimulus modifies its own intensity, typically in response to changes from other stimuli.

Neurotic regulation: Neurotic regulation is the result of the mind trying to protect itself from too much complexity. The mind will often use shortcuts and simplifications so as not to overload itself with too many options, thoughts, or tasks. This type of regulation often occurs when one’s need for security are high.

Gestalt: Maturing and the Recollection of Childhood

Gestalt theories are based on the idea that individuals are not just simple objects that act independently, but instead are complex organisms that act with consideration for other entities and circumstances. This means that people perceive themselves and everything they encounter as one unitary object, rather than independent things.

In his work, Gestalt Psychologist Max Wertheimer presents a theory of memory and how it is related to the present. His theory is based on the idea that there are patterns in the past that repeat themselves in the present. Gestalt Psychologists believe that people have a compulsion to repeat these patterns in order to feel safe and secure.

There are three types of these patterns: action patterns, defense mechanisms, and habitual forms of relating to things or people. Wertheimer believed that these past patterns caused trauma in people’s lives which lead them to feeling unsafe or insecure in their environment. The past and future are not understood as being separate from the present, but as a unity of which the present is a part,

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The Gestalt provides an explanation for how individuals experience meaningfulness in their lives when they are faced with complex situations. This theory relates to childhood because when children are faced with challenges, their minds work together to solve these problems in unique ways. One example of this would be how when they are faced with an object discrimination problem, children perform better than adults after instruction on the task.

Gestalt theory is a therapeutic recovery of childhood memories. Through the recollection of these memories, the individual can start to see their current self in a new light.

Gestalt theory is based on observations that were made on children in the 20th century. They found that children are very good at discriminating between different objects while they’re developing their own vision of reality. At some point, this skill starts to fade away and gets replaced with impatience, hallucinations, aggression and irresponsibility. These behaviors can be explained by the gestalt theory in that each behavior is seen as a solution to a complex problem or moment that was created by their environment or mental state.

A Further Look into Gestalt

An important idea behind Gestalt is that creativity can be seen as a healthy function. When we’re in an environment where we’re free to use all our senses, we start seeing things differently and we can come up with new ideas. And while this isn’t limited to just our work environment, it might be helpful to add some variety into your office routine or try sitting at a different place in the room than you usually do.

The Gestalt can be applied to many aspects of life, from being punctual to being creative. These are some examples. One example of Gestalt is when you see an incomplete puzzle on the table and you feel compelled to complete it. In this case, it is satisfying both your intellectual curiosity and your need for completionism, which would be two separate needs if only one existed without complement. The same applies with being punctual: You have a need for time management and organization as well as having a sense of accomplishment regarding the whole. Thought punctuality breaks time down into segments, it assists the whole of accomplishment.

From this school came concepts like ‘holism’ and ‘figure-ground’. The former describes how objects are seen as part of an integrated whole; while the latter refers to how an object stands out in relation to, or against, its background.

When looking at mechanical determinism, keep in mind that analysis breaks down everything we sense as composed of parts or stimuli. These analytical stimuli cannot then be put back together but instead they create a headache for neuroscientists trying to figure out how the awareness of coherent wholes come about. Gestalt theory does not solve this problem either but accepts the fact that they are there phenomenologically and proceeds with pragmatic derivations. In this way it is resonant with Quantum science and moves away from the old Newtonian model of reality.

Gestalt Theory

Gestalt theory is a family of theories of brain function, based on the idea that human beings are “hardwired” to organize their perceptions into patterns. We can perceive an object in different ways. Gestalt focuses on how we perceive objects as they are before us. Gestalt is formed by five rules: the law of proximity, law of similarity, law of closure, law of symmetry and law of common fate (trends). These rules are applied to understand how we react to whole objects based on what we see at first glance. The Gestalt principles of perceiving objects include:

Emergence: an object is perceived as a whole when it’s made up of smaller components that together create a new meaning; or when one perceives something in the whole that is not present in any of the elements. Emergence is featured heavily in Complexity where the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Reification: The Gestalt Principle of Reification suggests that we see an object as an entity and not as a collection of parts. We tend to think about objects as entities and we perceive them as unified wholes with definite shapes and boundaries; it demonstrates the tendency to take sensory data and give it meaning. Reification is generative perception in that implied contours generate more explicit meanings than the actual components contain, and are then experienced as ‘real’.

Multistability: the phenomenon where one can look at an image and see multiple interpretations; when two or more perceptions are seen at once (ambiguity).

Indeterminacy: the idea that there are many possible solutions to a problem.

Invariance: means perception resists change even when environmental factors change. For example, figures can be rotated or warped and still be recognized for what they represent; badly misspelled words are still readable, etc.

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt Theory recognizes 7 major principles of perception. These are as follows:

Principle of Proximity: we perceive objects that are close together as members of a group; proximity implies association.

Principle of Similarity: likewise, we tend to group objects together if they have similar attributes.

Principle of Closure: the tendency to complete shapes and make them into whole figures while ignoring gaps in information; we fill in the gaps to render our perception whole.

Principle of Symmetry: the tendency to construct symmetries around a formative center and to group things evenly around this perceived center.

Principle of Trends: continuity of motion along a common path is at work when we assign a common fate to imaginary paths of similitude for grouped wholes. Abrupt changes in trajectory are interpreted as anomalies and outliers.

Principle of Continuity: Alignment is perceived as unity (or wholeness); intersection is perceived as distinction and overlapping does not disrupt the perceived continuity of the whole object. Abrupt changes are perceived as disjointed and are disassociated from the whole.

Principle of Past Experiences: there is a distinct tendency to classify new stimuli according to interpretations based upon past experience. This is a type of experiential continuity.

Gestalt and Fuzzy-focus

A dual-mode of perceptual acuity has been developed based on verbatim and gist.

Verbatim, of course, refers to the perception of things in exactitude; by the script, or just as they are.

Gist: information restored in gist is conceptually semantic, construed according to our subjective referential systems of meaning.

Most of the effects described by Gestalt Theory address the gist mode of perceptuality.

Gestalt and Models of Quantum Cognition

Correlation between Quantum physics and Gestalt Theory have been made by several big-name physicists (David Bohm, most notably) based on the notion of an implicate order underlying the perceived universe. Similarly, the double-slit experimental series conclusively demonstrates that quantitative measurements can depend upon the order in which they are made. This resonates well with the Gestalt associations. The implication is that the Universe is operating under Strong Gestalt coherence and that it is a perceptual organism, like its constituents.

Cybernetics and Artificial Perception

Using proximities, similarities, symmetries, common fate grouping, continuities, and other strategies, the principle of lowest complexity leads to non-linear data representations and generative patterns with their subsequent perceptual transformations. As per this theory, awareness is data representation rather than “tangible” stimulus. Without comprehension of the architecture, the cybernetic model detects patterns in the data. As with the Quantum Universe, it would appear that AI is channeling organic perception via Gestalt fundamentals, leading to the conclusion that all Intelligence is Living Intelligence. Here we are treated to the concept of Intelligent Perception that is Contextually Discerning in Its fundamental essence, rather than mechanical naïveté about stimulus and gates.

Gestalt and Music

One of the most interesting practical examples of the demonstration of these principles in continuous action and constant interplay would be the perception of Music. The 7 Gestalt Principles are at work in all aspects within the melodic sequences (proximity, similarity, symmetry, closure, trends, continuity and past experiences, in the repetition of motif); the harmonic structure (in the recognition of a single tone produced by the many-voiced instruments of a section, perceptual recognition of intervallic structure and polyphony) and most impressively within the rhythms: the beat, tempo, time signature, and structure of percussion and rest (spaces between notes). The entire field of Audio Effects Processing could fall under this study, especially with regards to digital modeling paradigms (chorus and EQ just to mention a couple) and PA.

Of course the same principles are prevalent in the Visual Arts, as well.

Gestalt in Ontological Sociology

Alongside this long list of the fundamentals of Living Awareness, a new concept of Social Ontology begins to emerge; one that is undergirded by a descriptive vernacular of Perceptual law (proximity, similarity, symmetry, closure, trends, continuity and past experiences), the attractive complexities of wholeness and synergy; the resilience of institutional perpetuity; aggregate behavior, associations, and order; emergence, reification, invariance and multistability; Quantum Invariance and pluralistic diversity; Context, Self and Exterior (milieu, roles, norms); and gist (the soft-focus of culture and indoctrinations). 

Beyond this orthodoxy of sociological cannon a new horizon of transhuman futurist sociology emerges and beyond this arises the ultimate ontology of panpsychic collectivities with its transcendental subjectivities and advanced noospheric conceptuations. It would seem that the social domain is a collective extension of the fundamental expression inherent in Living Intelligence.