Gestalt Theories: Max Wertheimer

Marcelo Valderrey

23 Jun, 2024 05:09 PM

To seriously study creativity, it is useful to know something about the first scientific efforts to define and explain it, attributable to psychology.

1. Step 1: Small doses...visuals!

   The idiosyncrasies, concepts and language of mechanical engineering are somewhat distant from the psychological approach and it is easy for the reader to lose the thread of the explanations by becoming entangled with its specific terminology and its forms of expression.

   For this reason, I have preferred to extract small fragments of the theories of creativity and make an effort to create my own graphic image for them.

   My graphics involve the risk of biasing and/or distorting the original ideas, which also exists when trying to paraphrase them, but it brings the will to understand them and translate them into engineering language in the hope of bringing both approaches closer together.

   To this end, I have relied on research works that compile and summarize these theories. In particular, the work of authors Busse & Mansfield that appears in the quotes in the next step of the tutorial.

2. Step 2: Gestalt Theories: Max Wertheimer

   Busse & Mansfield (p. 49) stand out as psychologists who applied the principles of Gestalt (psychology of form or configuration) to Wolfgang Köhler (The task of gestalt psychology, 1969); and Max Whertheimer (Productive thinking, 1959) on whom they focus. It is based on the central idea that all mental activity is related to problem solving. And that the search for solutions responds to a tension that relaxes in the presence of the solution, which is recognized as true thanks to a revelation (insight). And it is recognized as applicable only to problems with a unique solution, which is reached through a specific plan, and which provides total certainty of its validity when found.

   To illustrate it, a hypothetical geometric problem is imagined, pretending that the Pythagorean theorem is not known, which states the need to calculate the diagonals (hypotenuses) of right triangles. The author reproduces his real process in this attempt at “productive thinking” (equivalent for Gestalt to “creative”) based on the adjustment of forms. He begins with an interpretation of the problem for a simpler particular case and arrives at a solution that relaxes the initial tension. But it soon proves not to be generally applicable and, then, the tension returns by posing a new, even more complex problem that can only be resolved through a restructuring of thought.

   References:

   • Busse, T. V., & Mansfield, R. S. (1984). Teorías del proceso creador: revisión y perspectiva. (©. 2.-2. reservados, Ed.) Studies in Psychology = Estudios de Psicología, nº 18 (traducido del Journal of Creative Behavior, num. 2, vol. 14, 91-103, 1980), 47-57. Recuperado el 18 de diciembre de 2020, de https://dialnet.unirioja.es/ejemplar/7049
   • Köhler, W. (1969). The task of gestalt psychology. Princeton University Press.
   • Whertheimer, M. (1959). Productive thinking. Nueva York: Harper.

   
   

3. Step 3: My graphic interpretation

   

   Note. It reflects the mental dynamics of the thinker who goes from the tension of the problems (dark areas) to the relaxation of the solutions, to return to the first when faced with new difficulties and needs to break up and restructure the process. Source: illustration by the author.

   
   

   Reference: all texts and images in this tutorial were extracted from the doctoral thesis cited below,

   • Valderrey, M.E. (2021), “Catalizadores Creativos en Ingeniería Conceptual: Evaluación de Habilidades Visuales y Verbales para Diseño Mecánico”. Propuesta de tesis doctoral, UNINI-México.

   
   

   
   

4. Step 4: Links

   This tutorial comes from:

   Psychoanalytics: Ernst Kris, Lawrence Kubie

   and continues in:

   Associative Theories: Sarnoff Mednick