Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology, school of psychology concerned with the tendency of the human (and even primate) mind to organize perceptions into “wholes”—for example, to hear a symphony rather than a large number of separate notes of different tones—due to the mind's ability to complete patterns from the available stimuli. Its main proponents were Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler. Focusing on the patterns formed by a subject in order to deal with experience, the school provides an alternate to the structuralist approach.

See also: Koffka, Kurt; Köhler, Wolfgang; Psychology; Wertheimer, Max.