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    Gestalt Beyond Gestalt

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    Kirti Khurana
    Gestalt psychology focuses on understanding phenomena as organized wholes rather than as collections of parts. It emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This theory is important for making sense of the world by looking at larger contexts rather than simplistic explanations. People often limit their perceptions by focusing only on smaller pieces of information rather than the larger picture. Applying Gestalt principles like proximity, similarity, and continuation can help understand how events and experiences are connected and to see beyond isolated negative events to recognize one's life as a unified whole.

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    Gestalt Beyond Gestalt

    Uploaded by

    Kirti Khurana
    18 views2 pages
    Gestalt psychology focuses on understanding phenomena as organized wholes rather than as collections of parts. It emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This theory is important for making sense of the world by looking at larger contexts rather than simplistic explanations. People often limit their perceptions by focusing only on smaller pieces of information rather than the larger picture. Applying Gestalt principles like proximity, similarity, and continuation can help understand how events and experiences are connected and to see beyond isolated negative events to recognize one's life as a unified whole.

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    Gestalt psychology focuses on understanding phenomena as organized wholes rather than as collections of parts. It emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This theory is important for making sense of the world by looking at larger contexts rather than simplistic explanations. People often limit their perceptions by focusing only on smaller pieces of information rather than the larger picture. Applying Gestalt principles like proximity, similarity, and continuation can help understand how events and experiences are connected and to see beyond isolated negative events to recognize one's life as a unified whole.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    18 views2 pages

    Gestalt Beyond Gestalt

    Uploaded by

    Kirti Khurana
    Gestalt psychology focuses on understanding phenomena as organized wholes rather than as collections of parts. It emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This theory is important for making sense of the world by looking at larger contexts rather than simplistic explanations. People often limit their perceptions by focusing only on smaller pieces of information rather than the larger picture. Applying Gestalt principles like proximity, similarity, and continuation can help understand how events and experiences are connected and to see beyond isolated negative events to recognize one's life as a unified whole.

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    Gestalt beyond Gestalt

    Somewhere, sometime we have all come across the word Gestalt. To psychologists it is one
    of the most important theories of all times, to others it just means a unified whole.

    How about today we all give it a little more perspective.

    Readings from different sources have simplified the meaning of gestalt which to me is
    ironical. It is basically a school of thought that helps us make sense of the world and its
    process by going beyond our simplistic thinking. If I were to ask you, ‘what is the likely
    outcome if you put your hand in flame?’ Undoubtedly most of us would answer that it would
    get burnt. But let me ask you, ‘have you ever played with a candle flame in your childhood,
    have you really got burnt?’ What happened there, how come most of us got the same answer
    even when the truth was very very different. The only reason is that we always break down
    information. We like to organise our thoughts in small parts and find universal concepts to
    find reliable structures to hold on to. As humans we have a tendency to fit pieces of missing
    information together, and in the process we somehow forget to look at the larger picture and
    immerse ourselves completely in those missing pieces. Our perception is limited by smaller
    units of information.

    That is where the importance of Gestalt lies for me. Internet tells me that gestalt can be
    defined as ‘an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts’. This
    concept is extremely important to understand oneself and life with its full potential. Our
    brain, its lobes and hemispheres and our mind, which is the field of our experiences must
    work in tandem to create meaning for every stimulus that comes our way. And knowingly or
    unknowingly, we always apply principles of gestalt to derive meaning and find our emotions
    attached to the stimuli presented.

    Let me make this clear with an example- If a person took a fall today, and as its consequence
    reached late for work and got chided and ended up getting a poor review at work – his
    thinking and emotions will be fully clouded by the ‘proximity’ of these three events and he
    might wound up with negative automatic thoughts, thus creating a ripple of negative
    emotions and carrying this wave back to every place he was to visit that day. He thus creates
    a negative gestalt in his head (which in reality is just a small speck in the gestalt of his life)
    and this becomes overwhelming for him and in turn affects his perception and emotions.

    The other principle we often unknowingly employ is that of similarity. Say, person X was
    bullied and laughed at when he was in school. As he grew, he found that his college peers
    also make fun of him. Finally, a few years later, even when, some of his colleagues at work
    laughed at something, he always felt as if he was being targeted. Due to ‘similarity’ in
    experiences over a period of time, he limited his perception to one that he thought was
    working against him. This person X too, focussed on similar incidents and created a gestalt of
    negatives rather than seeing these events in isolation in a life that was so unified and larger
    for him.
    Therefore, to simply put it, I can say that Gestalt psychology showed us how we gave
    meaning to the world. Meaning is not dependent on what happens outside us but rather what
    goes on within us. Our emotions and understanding is not influenced just by the worldly
    events but much of what we perceive is heavily influenced by our motivations and
    expectations.

    The simple equation is

    Event (in the outside word) ≠ emotion

    Rather,

    Event (in the outside world) + meaning we associate (perception within us) = Emotions

    As therapists , counsellors and or even as even well-wishers if we understand this concept we


    can help ourselves and people around us to look at the larger picture and attenuate the
    negatives and expand and exaggerate the gestalts of positives.

    This can also be seen when, the more we read, the more we start finding similarity in
    concepts across diverse subjects and fields. Everything starts coming together like magnets
    and it is then that you cannot take away one piece from the other. Similarly, we may think of
    using one therapy for one person, another for another, but as you work you realise that the
    consequence of the goal is bigger than the goal and that consequence is all that you want to
    recreate in therapy. Whatever you do, all of your practices lead to the same road. There are so
    many theories, so many principles, so many authors and their multiple methods- but the aim
    and the consequence of the aim is the same: Self Actualization. When you grow beyond
    rationalizing your actions and decisions, the horizon of your perception broadens and you
    swiftly and comfortably move towards that which is the consequence of the multiple goals
    you have created in this journey of life. You may or may not feel this right now, but
    eventually as you start focussing more on the consequences of your goals, you will find
    yourself growing. Growing into the universe, till you and the universe become the same.

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