Max Wertheimer

Psychologist

• Born: April 16, 1880
• Birthplace: Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Died: October 12, 1943
• Place of death: New Rochelle, New York

Czech psychologist and philosopher

Wertheimer pioneered the development of Gestalt psychology, which he and his colleagues Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, by way of Christian von Ehrenfels, introduced to the European and American psychological communities.

Areas of achievement Psychiatry and psychology, philosophy

Early Life

Max Wertheimer (VEHRT-hi-mehr) was born in Prague, which was then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into an accomplished middle-class family. His mother was a respected musician, and his father was a school principal. Wertheimer contemplated a musical career and showed interest in writing poetry. Later, while ostensibly studying law at Prague University, he became intrigued by philosophy and psychology.

When Wertheimer was beginning his inquiries into humanity’s ancient questions about the meaning of human life and its relation to the surrounding world traditional philosophical issues the methods of examining such profundities were changing dramatically. Many questions that previously had been the preserve of philosophy were coming under the purview of an increasingly empirical, evolving science subsequently known as psychology. This development led psychologists Wertheimer among them into many new areas, with physiological studies acquiring a significance equal to the older philosophies’ vital, often rigorously logical yet nonempirical musings and reflections.

Leaving Prague University in 1901, Wertheimer proceeded to the University of Berlin to study philosophy and psychology, then to the University of Württemberg, where in 1904 he received his doctorate. Until 1909, he pursued postdoctoral studies in Prague, Vienna, and again in Berlin. Financial independence permitted such academic mobility. During World War I, he aided Germany’s efforts in the development of acoustical devices for its submarines and the improvement of harbor fortifications. These services were short-lived, and he was never a combatant. Thus, from 1916 until 1929 he taught and conducted research at the University of Berlin, accepting a professorship at the University of Frankfurt in 1929 and maintaining it until he abandoned Adolf Hitler’s Germany in 1933 for New York City’s New School for Social Research. Meanwhile, in 1910, prior to his Frankfurt appointment, Wertheimer launched the psychological investigations that preoccupied the remainder of his life.

Life’s Work

Vacationing by train in 1910, Wertheimer made specific observations that gave initial shape to the school of psychology that shortly distinguished him as the founder of Gestalt (or Gestalten). Wertheimer did coin the term gestalt, which had previously appeared in German philosophical-psychological literature, although with a meaning differing from his own. Wertheimer’s Gestalt perceptions dealt with, or exposed, the overall configurations of shapes and forms existing prior to the mind’s assimilating and making sense of myriad external sensory data imposed on it. For Wertheimer, human perceptions occurred within an internal field; his evidence suggested that the totality of human perceptual observations constituted more than the sum of their tens of thousands of discrete, externally projected elements. Thus, Wertheimer aborted his 1910 vacation because of impressions drawn while watching scenery pass the train’s windows that led him to assumptions about how people actually see “apparent” motion. Immediately afterward, he employed rudimentary tachistoscopes or stroboscopes to measure human perceptions of brief exposures to moving visual stimuli. Light was projected for viewers through two slits, one vertical, the other at an angle of twenty to thirty degrees. When light flashed briefly through the slits, they saw both lights continuously. With slower projections, they saw the lights moving from one place to another.

The results of this commonsensical experiment conflicted with assumptions and approaches of the dominant psychological schools of 1912. The prevalent presumption was that conscious observations could be analyzed into vast numbers of identifiable sensory elements. That is, viewers actually saw the bark, branches, and leaves of a tree, and these parts imposed on one’s senses then converged in whole form or appeared to be in motion. Since that was deemed accurate, Wertheimer had to explain why, when one motionless object was added to another experimentally, the viewer perceived them to be in motion. Labeling his experimental discoveries the “phi phenomenon,” he asserted that “apparent movement” simply existed a priori within the mind and was irreducible to a count of external stimuli affecting perception. “Apparent motion,” for him, therefore required no explanation. Thus, although a square was composed of four lines joined in proper relation, the observer did not see four distinct lines; he saw squareness: the whole form instantly. Similarly, irrespective of the keys of instruments selected, when a melody was played, listeners heard neither the individual notes nor instruments. Whether the tune was “Yankee Doodle” or Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, listeners recognized a total composition. Such investigations were published by Wertheimer as “Experimentelle Studien über das Schen von Bewegung” (1912; “On the Phi Phenomenon as an Example of Nativism in Perception,” 1965).

Wertheimer’s advocacy of Gestalt initially contradicted the perspectives and assumptions of German structural and associationist psychologists, posing a challenge to such of their distinguished leaders as Wilhelm Wundt, who in Leipzig, Germany, then directed the world’s first and most renowned psychological laboratory. Wundt was the quintessential elementalist. For him, psychology’s task was to identify and calculate the tens of thousands of constituents of mental feelings, images, and sensations, hence the means by which they entered into combination as ideas, concepts, or images. Somewhat like contemporary chemists, Dmitry Mendeleyev, for example, or physicists such as Niels Bohr or Max Planck, Wundt sought to demonstrate that larger matter, forms, or shapes were composed of increasingly smaller, more distinct, and ultimately identifiable parts.

Wertheimer’s Gestalt evidence convinced him on the contrary that such discrete elements were not the raw data of human perceptions, feelings, images, or ideas. The fundamentals of human psychological activities were already structured within the mind and quite ready to assimilate assaults of external sensory stimuli. A person was therefore justified in simply saying “I see a horse” or “I see a house.”

His continued investigations of perceptual constancies buttressed his confidence in Gestalt methodology. If, specifically, one stands directly before a window, it projects a rectangle onto the eye’s retina. If one then stands to one side, in actuality the window becomes a trapezoid, and that change is projected onto the retina. Yet, as Wertheimer’s experiments many along similar lines demonstrated, one continued to perceive the window as a rectangle. Perception thus remained constant, despite alterations in the image projected onto the retina. He proffered further evidence that this same phenomenon occurs with regard to brightness and to the constancy of objects’ sizes. Perceptual experience therefore possessed qualities of wholeness indiscernible in any part of that experience.

In 1922, Wertheimer professionally advanced his famous principles of perceptual organization in his Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt: I. Prinzipielle Bemerkungen (1923; examination of objects as immediately given to consciousness). A person’s perception of objects occurs in the identical simultaneous and unified manner as when he perceives apparent motion. The human mind possesses its own inner, dynamic principles for organizing perceptions.

Like many other psychologists, Wertheimer was interested in learning processes. His evidence, however, took him in different directions from those pursued by Wundt and associationists. Since Gestalt emphasized the salient importance of perceptual processes, Wertheimer consequently opposed the trial-and-error method of learning identified with E. L. Thorndike, as well as John Watson’s stimulus-response approach. Ideally, Wertheimer would have teachers begin presentations with an overall view of their subject, proceeding then to their distinct parts.

Gradually, Gestalt psychology earned respect in Germany and much of Europe among psychologists as well as among other scientists who were dissatisfied with the purported sterility and mechanical qualities of Wundtian psychology. While this was occurring, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933 persuaded Wertheimer and Köhler to emigrate to the United States. Wertheimer found a berth as professor of philosophy and psychology on the graduate faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City. From then until his death on October 12, 1943, he continued experiments and sought to promulgate Gestalt psychology among American psychologists, although he was relatively unknown and, compared to Wundt’s fifty-five thousand pages of publication, had published little. His expectations of greater influence were, however, ill-timed. By the 1920’s and 1930’s, American psychology was dominated by behavioral psychologists such as Watson and Raymond Cattell, and educational psychologists such as Thorndike. At the same time, the profession was assimilating the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud. Only after Wertheimer’s death did the profound impact of his work become fully evident.

Significance

Notwithstanding nineteenth century precedents for important Gestalt-like initiatives, there is little dispute that Wertheimer founded a new and permanent line of psychological and related physiological scientific inquiry. Because professional psychology recorded many significant attainments before and during Wertheimer’s career, but in part because he broadly questioned the neglect or disdain of some of these previous endeavors, his conclusions challenged many fundamentals of the predominant psychological theories of his day and of some that preceded him. Traditional experimental psychology, like the natural sciences, had been premised on a reductionism, breaking down investigation of perception, memory, feeling, learning, and thought into distinct elements indeed, when Wertheimer commenced experimenting, other psychologists had already counted forty-four thousand mental elements that combined to compose human perception and therefore on that basis were accounting for the way humans’ minds functioned to make sense of themselves and their world.

Without ignoring physiological constituents of perception and comprehension, Wertheimer’s evidence questioned, as the reigning theories did not, whether a person was a mere apparatus, “a combination of cameras, telephone receivers, receptors for warmth, cold, pressure,” which under external excitation produced a convergence descriptive of human mental perceptions and reactions. He believed that such subsumptions ignored the basic and immanent human impulses of human actions: “a trend toward sensible, appropriate action, feeling, thought.” Worse, from his viewpoint, traditionalists failed evidentially to explain elementary facts of human experiences: what people see when they open their eyes and look about them.

Starting with investigations of the retina, proceeding to explanations of the phi phenomenon, then to developing his principles of (mental) organization, advancing further to adducing physiological evidence for his principle of isomorphism, and finally to explications bearing on productive and creative thought processes, Wertheimer produced substantial descriptions of a more human, thinking human species. These results he attributed to immanent psychological qualities allowing humans to perceive themselves, their environment, and their problems as wholes. Accordingly, Wertheimer has left a permanent imprint on the daily activities of psychologists.

Bibliography

Asch, Solomon E. “Max Wertheimer’s Contributions to Modern Psychology.” Social Research 13 (1946): 81-102. A clearly written, readily comprehensible, authoritative, and professionally sound analysis. Contains a few information footnotes.

Fancher, Raymond E. Pioneers of Psychology. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. Provides a fine contextual setting for a greater understanding of Wertheimer and his followers operating amid other psychological developments. Clearly written both for laymen and professionals alike. Contains several photographs, suggested readings at the end of major sections of this study, end-of-book notes for each chapter, and a very extensive, double-columned index.

Herrnstein, Richard, and Edward C. Boring, eds. A Source Book in the History of Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965. A large, authoritative volume written with professional precision and intended for readers with some prior knowledge of psychology. Includes excerpts, abridgments, and translations of important psychological writings that are not easily found elsewhere. An invaluable and exhaustive work in its field. Excerpts are preceded helpfully by brief editorial abstracts. Thorough in its chronological, topical, and personality coverages. Includes an end-of-volume list of excerptions, plus extensive indexes of names and subjects.

King, D. Brett, and Michael Wertheimer. Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2005. First book-length biography of Wertheimer. Describes the events of his life, the origins of his psychoanalytic thought, his theories of Gestalt therapy, and the continuing importance of his work.

Köhler, Wolfgang. “Max Wertheimer, 1880-1943.” Psychological Review 51 (May, 1944): 143-146. A tribute to Wertheimer’s professional contributions by his distinguished coworker Köhler. The substance of the piece is professional and is devoid of personal information about Wertheimer. Includes an excellent photograph of the elderly Wertheimer. Useful, if not essential.

Neel, Ann. Theories of Psychology. New York: Schenkman, 1969. Part 4 deals with Gestalt psychology authoritatively and in its appropriate developmental setting. Excellent for understanding psychology’s evolving theories. There are general but often extensive suggested readings at the end of major sections that relate to subject areas covered. Very useful reading for specialists and nonspecialists alike. Contains a very extensive index.

Schultz, Duane P. A History of Modern Psychology. New York: Academic Press, 1969. Though the first two chapters provide useful historical background, the book’s concentration is on late nineteenth and twentieth century psychologists and their work. A well-written, accurate, and useful survey. Chapter 12 features a fine discussion of Wertheimer and the Gestalt school and the nature and consequences of their work. Suggested readings close every chapter, and there is a useful bibliography and index.