The origin of meaning:
Gestalt in a reconsidered context
A. Manja Larcher,
Brigham Young University, Utah
Gestalt theory has, for the most part, been ignored in psychology (Smith 1997, Keen 2001, Fuller 1990) because of its "unscientific premises, lacking of evidence, mysterious concepts," and because of the "vague explanations of its theory" (Bartley 1933). Traditional assumptions made by the discipline about our need to explain the world in terms of observable matter, numbers, self-contained facts, and universal laws, have prevented a serious examination and more sophisticated understanding of Gestalt theory. Gestalt psychology, because it seems to escape capture within orthodox versions of rationalism and empiricism (Köhler 1938), has been rather summarily dismissed as "metaphysical," as if that were a fatal law. At the root of the rejection of Gestalt theory lies a certain concept of the nature of truth. And the question of truth has been largely ignored by psychology (Slife 1999, Williams 2000b, 1994). Furthermore, within the current intellectual climate, characterized by the clash of modernism and postmodernism, serious work on the question and nature of truth become hopelessly gridlocked.
Truth has either been taken to be absolute, meaning absolutely acontextual, observable and predictable by our scientific methods, or absolutely relative. The problem is that either brand of absolutism ends up making truth either inaccessible and unusable on the one hand, or meaningless on the other (Slife 1999). In such a picture, people and cultures are either determined by a truth, and its derivative values and prescriptions, that is invariant across contexts, or, they would do well to withhold are not commitment to any truth or value system at all, because of the contextual relativity of truth. Thus, at present we are experiencing a lack of moral grounding for psychology and of confidence in any means of evaluating knowledge (Slife 1999). An alternative approach to the question of truth would require the avoidance of the type of absolutism that ignores or dismisses the broader issue of context and the powerful and undeniable contribution of context to any understanding or theory of truth. It would also require avoiding the facile relativism that some see as a necessary side effect of any contextual approach to truth. This “middle ground” for truth has been difficult to stake out and defend. Essential to the task is a close examination of the nature of lived experience with all its contextuality, and irreducibility. Such a middle ground will also require that we reconsider the "investigative tools" available to psychology. This paper will argue that Gestalt psychology provides the principles and concepts that open up just such a middle ground, as well as pointing us toward the means to investigate such truth.
The primary purpose here is to bring into the discourse of psychology the widely overlooked importance and uniqueness of Gestalt theory in such a context of truth as we have just discussed, and its great potential for opening the door for the ethical and the moral, to enter into a scientific psychology. From the perspective of Gestalt psychology, the knowledge in our field is incomplete unless considerations of truth, the ethical, and the moral find a place within it (Köhler 1938, Rutledge 1919). In short, it will be proposed that Gestalt psychology, when taken seriously, is a valuable theoretical resource that can effectively introduce meaning and truth into the context of scientific psychology.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Gestalt psychologists recognized and warned of a science that had become void of meaning and value. The Gestalt movement was, in large measure a reaction to Positivism, Naturalism, Structuralism, and Behaviorism. What these movements had in common were reductionistic and atomistic ideas of how to arrive at truth or knowledge. Gestalt psychology responded to these reductionistic concepts with Holism. Gestalt psychologists argued that reality and the science that studies it must be understood in light of the existence of what might be called an “implicate order” (See Bohm 2000 for a related use of the term) and of relationships within that order. Gestalt psychology specifically looks at contrast, organization, and dynamic processes between and within contextual reality with the goal of depicting and describing wholes and preserving meaning.
An analysis of the word “Gestalt” in the context of the German language seems to reveal a different meaning than the word has had in the context of the English language. “Gestalt” refers to sort of a multidimensional form that is very much imbedded in and related to its context of meaning. In this sense, the word transcends what we might more commonly identify as an object or figure. A Gestalt seems to be more “animated” than mere form or object, implying a sort of "reaching out" to its environment. It is more complex in its structure than can be conveyed by mere “form” or “object.” Its relation and presentation to its environment -- an environment including the observer – is instantaneous. The word "Gestalt" in the German language suggests knowledge of an "other,” a sort of "dialogue" between me and that "other," and a sort of connection that draws me into that "dialogue." A presentation of a "Gestalt" suggests the involvement of my perception and awareness in an act of identification of reality. A Gestalt can thus be identified as a kind of knowledge.
Earlier notions of the term “Gestalt” in the German language probably attached more vague, mystic, and metaphysical meaning to it. I suppose that Gestalt psychology possibly brought the term out of obscurity by offering a different usage of the word. Kurt Koffka, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, refers to a Gestalt as being a specific, concrete, individual, organized entity that possesses a definite shape or form. However, this entity is a configuration with characteristics neither derivable from, nor comprehendible by the (mere) summation of its component parts (1935).
I do not get the impression, after thoroughly reading several texts that a Gestalt was meant, by the Gestaltists, to be the sort of self-contained "form" or "object" described in traditional science. A Gestalt is more "alive," complex in its interaction with its environment, and relational. Gestalt in the German language is further described as Erlebniseinheit, or Erscheinungsform (Brockhaus 1996-99), which again refers back to the subjective and essential experience by an observer of something arising from beyond the world of form, however an experience of precise shape.
Having a context for the word “Gestalt,” we move next to a discussion of three fundamental principles of Gestalt theory. Essentially the founders of Gestalt theory tried to provide a new theory and science of knowledge. Certainly knowledge and meaning are inextricably bound and are mutually defining. When we speak of meaning we invariably refer to the content of a certain situation or thing in relation to the speaker. The way in which we relate to the world we live in, or in other words, the way in which we create, live, and participate in meaning is the foundation of knowledge. That relation provides the perspective from which we can observe, speak, and know.
Traditional scientific method has tried to anchor knowledge in the objective realm, a realm where objects are what they are, and context, perspective and relation are, at best, not central to knowledge, and at worst, sources of pollution. In other words, traditional methods have suggested that we can, and, in fact, must, suspend our most intimate relationships with what we wish to examine – except for merely sensory and cognitive relationships. This manner of constructing knowledge ignores the relationship between the observer and the object of interest and thus the meaning that has its being between the two. In the traditional approach, the meaning of all things is self-contained, "locked in" the object of investigation and revealed to us only partly and with great difficulty. Similarly, the knowing subject is self-contained, keeping meaning to him- or herself, as a sort of “container” of knowledge. As indicated in the above analysis of the word “Gestalt,” the relationship between us and reality, inherent in the experience of reality, is exactly what a Gestalt should capture and represent. Relationships are present and of absolute importance at every level of Gestalt experience.
In studying the basic principles represented in a Gestalt, we can understand that meaning comes from contrast. Gestalt psychologists conceptualized this idea in their figure-ground principle, but also in the Gestaltists’ notions of field, or context theory, and Isomorphism. The principle offigure and ground is shown in this two-dimensional picture.
The figure can only be identified because of its background, and the background only because of its figure. The contrasting parts of figure and ground are interlocked and related entities forming a whole. Wholes are made of and exhibit contrast. Contrast, contours, and figure and ground are all implicately related to, and part of the whole. Without contrasts we could not perceive contours, and without contours we could not know of either a figure or a ground -- we would not perceive anything. Gestalt psychologists articulated the concept of non-perception, expressed in their notion of a Ganzfeld (“all-field"). A Ganzfeld is a cosmic, unorganized and unperceived field without contours or any visible contrast, displaying nothing. A Ganzfeld thus may be interpreted as "nothingness," because, if there is no contrast, there is nothing (for us to perceive).
The principle of figure and ground also demonstrates a part-whole relationship. I experience the components of the picture not individually and separated from each other, but instantaneously, as a whole. However, the figure, as a part of the ground with which it forms a whole, is likewise a whole in itself – a whole that, simultaneously with my perception of it as a figure, serves also as context to parts of another context. The figure and ground principle thus presents us with a part-whole relationship while it simultaneously describes a whole. The figure and ground principle thus demonstrates the origin of meaning through contrast – contrast within ever extending wholes.
Köhler originally noted "the whole is different from the sum of its parts," though tradition has altered the notion to be "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" (Köhler 1969). To propose that a whole is different from the sum of its parts suggests that the whole takes on its meaning and identity from something beyond itself, and further that one cannot identify that whole through reductivistic concepts. The principle of extended wholes or field and context theory clarifies this notion. In order to derive meaning and knowledge from contrast, we need at least one more dimension than any single part-whole context alone provides. This dimension lies within the extended whole or expanding context, and allows human perception to become meaningful knowledge.
The notion of ever-extended wholes expands the principle of figure and ground to ever extended levels, taking to a higher level also the characteristics of relatedness and contrast. Gestalt psychologists conceived of our conscious field as the differentiation of the world into figure and ground. An understanding and awareness of there being a “whole” is only possible under the conditions that we, as observers, seeing the contrast, contours, and parts to the whole, are -- in some sense, but not in every sense -- “outside” of the perceived whole. In other words, our seeing of the contrasts and contours of both figure and ground and of a whole laid out before us is possible because we are not part of that perceived whole. However, this awareness and our perception in it are not the "objective" kind sought by traditional scientific methods, in which the observer has no relationship to the observed. We as the observers are part of a greater context, which is not obvious to us because we (and our perception) are surrounded by it, and we are in a relationship with the object of our observation within that greater context. Such interplay or relationship between figure, or several figures and a ground or between several parts and a whole is expressed in a Gestalt. What Gestalt theory presents us with, then, is a sort of multi-dimensional picture of many figures and grounds in ever-extended contexts. A figure becomes a Gestalt in this extended, multi-dimensional context. Gestalt is a multidimensional expression of contrast within extended contexts.
This picture depicts the interaction of a figure-ground construct within multi-dimensional space. The form within the cube is a Gestalt. The cube itself is a Gestalt, because we know that we and our perception of the cube are again parts or Gestalten within an even greater context. The meaning we can detect and depict at the borders of contrast between figure and ground arises out of that greater whole that both, the observer and the figure, are part of. It could also be said that a Gestalt is the multidimensional or multi-contextual version of form, within the lived experience of human beings.
The Gestaltists seemed to not have expanded very much on the notion of the ever-extended whole. Questions such as, "Is there a greatest whole? "What is the nature of that whole" and "How do we assess context from this ever expanding perspective?" mainly remained unanswered. I believe that answers to such questions could not have been explored, answered, and defended within the context of the scientific theory present at the rise of Gestalt psychology. The Gestalt founders, however, were greatly inspired in their thinking towards a new and important theory of science -- a science that is open to the meaning we and our investigative tools are part of (Larcher 2002). The reinterpreted scientific theory of the Gestaltists is especially important to the reconsidered context of truth some scholars have started to rely on (Rutledge 1919, Slife in press, Slife 1999, Williams 200b, 2002, 2004).
Köhler stated that phenomena cannot fully be explained by an analysis of the composition of parts (i.e., reflexes, behavior, perceptions, sensations), but must be studied wholes (i.e., someone's behavior in the context of my presence, the sharing of meaning among relationships within a context, the motivation behind certain actions, relations, etc...; see also Fuller 1990, Larcher 2002). Truth has been said to be readily available to us and in a way "reaching out" to us (Slife in press), depicting the context for all things (Williams 2000 b). As we seek a relationship with a thus similarly "seeking" truth the meaning of all things naturally unfolds for us.
It follows from my reading of the Gestalt principles that if truth is discernable at all from the knowledge of experiencing human beings, truth must be regarded as non-reductive and holistic, and must be thoroughly enmeshed in the experience of beings who are, in some sense, sensitive to truth and meaning. This approach to truth makes contact with the treatment given the topic by Martin Heidegger (1977) in his essay, “On the Essence of Truth.” He talks of the essence of truth as “letting beings be.” The emphasis here, as in Gestalt psychology, lies on activity, as in “letting,” and “being.” Truth, in this approach, is not independent of, nor simply “given to” a passive perceiver, but is very much bound up in what the knower is doing in relation to truth. Furthermore, as Heidegger describes it, the being of truth is embedded in Being – in an important, sense, the largest “context” for existence – a context of which both knower and known are part, and through which they are related.
Summary
Assumptions made about the nature of truth and inquiry into truth by the intellectual disciplines prominent at the time of the rise of Gestalt psychology have restricted the further development of Gestalt psychology. The project of Gestalt psychology was, in large measure, to defend science, howver a science that preserves and illuminates meaning inherent in the relations between the world and knowing and agents. These relations and the essential agency of knowers must be taken into account at every level and in every component of the whole.
As with any treatment of the work of persons who are not present to defend themselves, it is not clear where the Gestalt founders’ notions end, and where my own interpretations begin. However, from my study, it seems clear that the Gestaltists were congenial to notions of agency, truth, and value, which derive from larger contexts, which may include principles and entities not given legitimate consideration in current mainstream psychology. Time has not been kind to Gestalt psychology. It has never been fully explored nor developed. My hope is that we are more open to such notions today and can appreciate a revived Gestalt psychology as a vital contributor to a scientific psychology.
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