Gestalt Psychology

Often summarized by the phrase "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts," Gestalt psychology refers to [Page 304]an approach to understanding everyday human experiences as a whole rather than breaking them down into a collection of individual stimuli, behaviors, or both. This approach recognizes the ability of the human brain to piece together separate stimuli in context to one another and their surroundings so that the overall impression of an object, event, or other stimulus provides more information to the individual making the observation than was provided by the individual component stimuli. In other words, the individual may actually experience something that is not present in the stimuli themselves. A common example of this is watching a motion picture at a theater. ...