Gestalt Psychology: The Definitive Statement of the Gestalt Theory

I picked this book to read because I was interested in how the average computer user approaches a computer screen. I’ve been convinced for some time now (maybe 15-20 years) that people approach computers not through user manuals nor even through tips on how to use it. They approach the computer through their intuition.

Intuition has a lot to do with the psychological concept of Gestalt, so I’ve learned. The Gestalt of an experience is the essential insight that the outside world offers. For example, the Gestalt of a drop-down computer widget is to look for something to come down from it. This is the “insight” (the purpose of thought according to Koehler) that the experience offers. So one clicks and sees the result.

Koehler describes how we approach the world through our prior categories of understanding – behavior, introspection, recall, etc. – until we finally gain some insight into our experience. It’s only when we meet this insight, this understanding, this Gestalt, that we reach our home and live more as we are supposed to live. We are happy, content, even joyful.

I share Koehler’s despising of behaviorism. It provides for such a shallow psychology. I was surprised when he said that introspection was not the end. Instead, it is a step along our journey to insight.

This book is hard to understand – exactly as one might expect from a German psychologist. Nonetheless, it began to make sense at the very end, at the chapter for Insight/Gestalt. I’m grateful for a more in-depth understanding of this word and thus of myself.