WERTHEIMER, MAX

WERTHEIMER, MAX (1880–1943), founder of Gestalt psychology. Wertheimer was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. After studying philosophy and psychology, he spent some years in independent investigation until, in 1910, he arrived at the University of Frankfurt, where he began the studies with which his name is connected. There he met Wolfgang Koeh ler and Kurt *Koffka, with whom he formed a lifelong association and who helped pioneer the Gestalt movement. In 1916 he went to lecture at Berlin University and returned to Frankfurt in 1929 as professor of psychology. With the rise of Hitler in 1933, Wertheimer emigrated with his family to the United States, joining the faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Gestalt psychology begins with the observation that experiences and actions are not adequately described as a sum of elements, that there are innumerable psychological facts – such as melodies and visual forms – that also refer to qualities in wholes only. Wertheimer proposed that there are wholes with their own properties and tendencies that are not discoverable in their isolated parts, that a whole determines what the properties of its parts will be. This statement of the problem of part-whole relations, central to Gestalt theory, broke decisively with the presuppositions of atomistic psychology.

Wertheimer's perceptual investigations laid the concrete foundations of Gestalt psychology. In 1912 he showed that the experience of movement cannot be split up into a sum of successive sensations, that it is an effect of stimulus events cooperating to produce a new unitary outcome. His account of the principles of perceptual grouping was another major contribution. How does mosaic of discrete stimulations produce a unitary percept? The discovery of this question was one of Wertheimer's great achievements. Investigators had previously taken the formation of units for granted; Wertheimer showed that this was a central problem for the psychology of perception. He identified certain selective principles of grouping, among them those of proximity, similarity, closure, common fate, and good continuation. He held that one principle, that of Praegnanz, was inclusive of the others, the principle that grouping tends toward maximal simplicity and balance, or toward "good form." In this manner he established that perception is a product of organization. Gestalt psychology revolutionized the modern study of perception and affected the outlook in other areas of psychology. Wertheimer related the problems of Gestalt theory to issues of logic, aesthetics, and ethics. Keenly sensitive to the human implications of psychological doctrines, he questioned prevalent assumptions about man as a creature of habit and the relativism of his values.

bibliography:

W. Koehler, in: Psychological Review, 51 (1944), 143–6; E.B. Newman, in: American Journal of Psychology, 57 (1944), 428–35; S.E. Asch, in: Social Research, 13 (1946), 81–102; R.I. Watson, The Great Psychologists (1968²), 436–57; A.S. Luchins, in: iess, 16 (1968), 522–7 (incl. bibl.). add. bibliography: V. Sarris, Max Wertheimer in Frankfurt… (Ger., 1995); M. Wertheimer, in: Der Exodus aus Nazideutschland 1997) 191–206; D.B. King and M. Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory (2005); J.G. Benjafield, in: A History of Psychology (2005), 170–6.

[Solomon Asch]