Max Wertheimer: Gestalt Theory Founder
By Shea Stevens, last edited 11/20/23
Max Wertheimer was one of three main founders of Gestalt theory in Germany in the early 20th century. The Gestalt theory of these thinkers was one strand among others in Germany at the time focusing their work around the term “gestalt.” The term was used by different thinkers in different ways and this was a source of contention among them. Goethe contributed in important ways as an early predecessor of this movement, by his own use of the term “gestalt” in his writing. (More on this can be found in Stefano Poggi’s article, “Goethe and Gestalt Psychology: A Commonplace Revisited.”) Max Wertheimer was a student of Christian von Ehrenfels, whose gestalt ideas he developed.
While many of the other thinkers who were using the term “gestalt” at the time in Germany were politically conservative and sympathetic to antisemitic ideas, the three founders of Gestalt theory, Wertheimer, Koffka and Kohler stood apart from the crowd in resisting these trends and resisted the Hitler regime. Wertheimer and Koffka were Jewish, and all three fled Germany under Nazi rule. Wertheimer held democratic, liberal ideals.
Wertheimer’s decision to use the word gestalt on his own terms was bold; many others in his time were using it in a quasi-mystical, politically conservative and/or antisemitic way. He, on the other hand, used it to describe “his socially liberal, Jewish-dominated, and empirically oriented research program in Berlin” (Harrington). This bold movement of Wertheimer’s, this direction he took gestalt, became the roots of gestalt theory as we know it today in psychology. I have a video on this topic here.
Much of this blog post will paraphrase information from chapter four of Anne Harrington’s excellent book, “Reenchanted Science.”
“Founded by Max Wertheimer before the First World War and then further advanced in collaboration with Wolfgang Kohler, Kurt Koffka, and others through the Weimar years, Gestalt theory argued for the possibility of retaining a place for human significance in nature but without sacrificing rigorous experimental standards of traditional natural science.” -Anne Harrington
The “gestalt” concept allowed thinkers to see the world as a plurality of connected wholes, rather than atomistic reductionism, vitalism, or viewing the world as one undifferentiated whole. This important concept had many implications. The concept of gestalt, as an observed quality of logic and orderliness, meant there was still hope that immanent structure and meaning could still really exist in this world, even in the wake of rapidly developing scientific understanding of the world in evolution and physics at the time and continuing to the present. Wertheimer’s life was spent defending the existence of truth, democracy, and meaning even in the midst of a rapidly changing, turbulent state of the world. Wertheimer was convinced that there was immanent logic and meaning that could be found in one’s concrete, lived situation. The perception of a “gestalt” was not only the basis of his scientific research, but also the basis of his philosophy which he professed to the end of his life.
Wertheimer’s Early Life
Max Wertheimer was born in Prague on April 15, 1880. He was raised in a Jewish family that was religiously conservative and intellectual. His grandfather secretly introduced Wertheimer to Spinoza, who his father had forbidden him to read. Spinoza gave Wertheimer “resources to conceive of the problem of order (Gestalt) and mind in a nondualistic way” (Harrington, 112). Wertheimer deeply loved music, especially piano.
From 1898 to 1901, Wertheimer attended the University of Prague. Though he first enrolled as a law student, “from the beginning he studied psychology, music, philosophy, and the history of art.” By 1900, he switched to the philosophy department, under Ehrenfels. He resonated with Ehrenfels’ concerns with Gestalt and ordering principles in perception, but “also with his love of music and ‘allegiance of the primacy of aesthetic over techonological values in science and philosophy’” (Harrington). Other mentors were important for Wertheimer: “psychologist-philosophers like Oswald Kulpe and Karl Marbe in Marburg (with whom he formally completed his doctorate) and especially Carl Stumpf in Berlin” (Harrington).
“Gestalt theory aimed to give back to people the integrity of their consciousness. In doing so, this epistemology also affirmed what Goethe, in his way, had long known: that the basis of lived reality was not meaningless particles but rather ‘immanent structuralism,’ order, and wholeness.” Harrington, 117
In 1903, Wertheimer received his PhD from the University of Würzburg. He then began his academic career at the Psychological Institute in Frankfurt, which later became the University of Frankfurt. From 1910 to 1916 he worked there and conducted pioneering experiments in the perception of motion and phi phenomenon. Wertheimer first founded his Gestalt theory before World War I, publishing his research on perception in "Experimental Studies on Motion Vision" in 1912.
World War I
Wertheimer served in World War I as a research psychologist with the Prussian Artillery Testing Commission, which was located in the Bavarian Quarter of Berlin, not far from Albert Einstein’s house. Their friendship began at this time, “nurtured by lengthy visits in which he attempted to understand the Gestalt-like psychological processes employed by Einstein to conceive the theory of relativity” (Harrington, 113). They would remain friends until Wertheimer’s death. During the war years Wertheimer also developed a friendship with physicist Max Born, who was also friends with Einstein.
Years in Germany After World War I
Max Wertheimer lived in Berlin from 1916 to 1929 working at the Berlin Psychological Institute. He gave lectures and pursued his research on perception and gestalt in the University of Berlin. In 1923, he married Anna Caro, with whom he had four children. In 1924 he gave his talk on Gestalt Theory to Berlin’s Kant Society. I also have a video about that speech here. He returned to Frankfurt in 1929 where he worked as a professor until he left Germany in 1933.
Years in America (1933-1943)
In 1933, the changes in Germany's government prompted Wertheimer to leave; he felt his Jewish roots put him in danger. The Wertheimers' emigration to the United States was arranged and he and his wife and their children arrived in New York on September 13, 1933. The family became US citizens. Wertheimer accepted a professorship at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He remained there for the last decade of his life.
From 1934-1940, Wertheimer wrote four major papers, philosophical essays on the topics of truth, ethics, democracy, and freedom which are all commonly grounded on gestalt ideas of the whole and its parts, and the importance of looking at the "total situation." I highly recommend checking out these works of his: “On Truth,” “Some Problems in the Theory of Ethics,” “On the Concept of Democracy,” and “A Story of Three Days.” I have a video here exploring his essay On Truth.
In America he remained in touch with his European colleagues, many of whom had also emigrated to America. Koffka was at Smith College; Köhler at Swarthmore, and Lewin at Cornell University and the University of Iowa. In declining health, Wertheimer continued to work on his research on "productive thinking." Max and Anna Wertheimer divorced in 1942. He completed his only book, Productive Thinking in September 1943. He died from a heart attack just three weeks after the book's completion in New Rochelle, New York, where his body is interred. He was the father of Michael Wertheimer, also a psychologist. Michael co-wrote his father’s biography, published in 2007.
Quotes
“Gestalt theory will not be satisfied with sham solutions suggested by a simple dichotomy of science and life. Instead, Gestalt theory is resolved to penetrate the problem itself by examining the fundamental assumptions of science. It has long seemed obvious—and is, in fact, the characteristic tone of European science—that “science” means breaking up complexes into their component elements. Isolate the elements, discover their laws, then reassemble them, and the problem is solved. All wholes are reduced to pieces and piecewise relations between pieces.
The fundamental “formula” of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way. There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.” - Address to Kant Society, Berlin, 1924
“The programme to treat the organism as a part in a larger field necessitates the reformulation of the problem as to the relation between organism and environment. The stimulus-sensation connection must be replaced by a connection between alteration in the field conditions, the vital situation, and the total reaction of the organism by a change in its attitude, striving, and feeling.” - Address to Kant Society, Berlin, 1924
“The fundamental question can be very simply stated: Are the parts of a given whole determined by the inner structure of that whole, or are the events such that, as independent, piecemeal, fortuitous and blind the total activity is a sum of the part-activities?” - Address to Kant Society, Berlin, 1924
“…[I]n the opinion of many people the distinction between idealism and materialism implies that between the noble and the ignoble. Yet does one really mean by this to contrast consciousness with the blithesome budding of trees? Indeed, what is there so repugnant about the materialistic and mechanical? …Does it come from the material qualities of the connected pieces? …The point is not what the material pieces are, but what kind of whole it is.” - Address to Kant Society, Berlin, 1924
“Truth and falsity, indeed understanding, is not necessarily something purely intellectual, remote from feelings and attitudes. In many [situations] the most important thing is not the statement but the whole position, a man’s attitude toward the thing itself. It is in the total conduct of men rather than in their statements that truth or falsehood lives, more in what a man does, in his real reaction to other men and to things, in his will to do them justice, to live at one with them. Here lies the inner connection between truth and justice.” - On Truth, 1934