PSY502 Highlighted Handouts and Merged Slides Lectures 23-45 by VU Global

Lesson 22 Lesson 23 Gestalt Psychology (Continued) Lesson 24 Lesson 25 Historico-Evolutionary Psychology Lesson 26 Historico-Evolutionary Psychology (Continued) Lesson 27 Scientific Look At Mental Disorders Lesson 28 Scientific Look At Mental Illness Lesson 29 Sigmund Freud And The Psychoanalytic Movement Lesson 30 Sigmund Freud And Psychoanalytical Movement (Continued) Lesson 31 Carl Jung And Analytical Psychology Lesson 32 Jung‘s Analytical Psychology Lesson 33 Alfred Adler And Individual Psychology Lesson 34 Neo-Freudians Lesson 35 Neo-Freudians (Continued) Lesson 36 Erikson And Moreno Lesson 37 Humanistic Psychology Lesson 38 Modern Trends In Psychological Treatment Lesson 39 Modern Trends In Psychological Treatment (Continued) Lesson 40 Anti-Psychiatry Movement Lesson 41 Psychology In The Third World Lesson 42 Psychology In The Third World, China And Pakistan Lesson 43 Psychology in The 21st Century Lesson 44 Psychology In The 21st Century (Continued) Lesson 45 Psychology In The 21st Century (Continued) Lesson 23

Wolfgang Kohler (1880-1943)

Wolfgang Kohler

Wolfgang Kohler was born in 1880 and he died in 1943. He was a German but is known mostly as an American psychologist because he worked in America. From 1913 to 1920 he was director of a research station at Tenerife, Germany. Later he served as both professor of psychology and director of the Psychology Institute, Berlin. He came to the United States in 1934, where he became professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. Köhler is best known for his experiments with problem-solving in apes at Tenerife and the influence of his writings in the founding of the school of Gestalt psychology. His writings include Gestalt Psychology and The Mentality of Apes.

Kohler‘s main contribution in the Gestalt School is his discovery of learning by insight. He conducted experiments on monkey and saw that monkeys were able to solve their problems through insight. He saw that monkeys were able to attach sticks together to reach far off objects which they thought was food. They would also pile up boxes to reach high places if they wanted to. Kohler concluded that learning takes place by insight. Monkeys thought about what to do first and then performed the action. Based on this observation, Kohler concluded trial and error as a method of learning.

Kohler also postulated the concept of isomorphism which means that there is kind of a mental map of the objects in environment, and this mental map helps in learning by insight. This means that in the mind of individuals, there is a map which according to him is the explanation of the things around him. In other words, the map is the individual‘s perception about the world around him. This concept was called isomorphism by Kohler. These were some of the contributions of Wolfgang Kohler. Kurt Koffka (1886-1941)

Kurt Koffka

The other prominent contributor in the Gestalt school was Kurt Koffka who was born in 1886 and died in 1941. He was an American psychologist but was born in Germany. Before settling permanently in the United States in 1928 as a professor at Smith, he taught at Cornell and at the Univ. of Wisconsin. With Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler he is credited with developing the theories that gave rise to the school of Gestalt psychology. His book Growth of the Mind (1924) was considered responsible for awakening much interest in Gestalt concepts.

Koffka‘s concept of field theory was an important concept of the Gestalt school. He distinguished between the geographical field and the field of experience. Geographical field is the actual environment while the field of experience is the mindset of the observer. Humans react to the field of experience and not to the geographical field. The geographical field is the actual field which represents the real world around. The field of experience represents the experiences or the dispositions of the person who experiences the field. For example, if a person goes for a walk in the garden and he knows that there have been witnesses of snakes in that garden, he is quite likely to confuse a twig with a snake. This means that the person has actually considered only the field of experience and ignored the geographical field or the reality. This is what Koffka tried to explain. In his views, an individual tends to ignore the geographical field in face of the field of experience which dominates his understanding or perceptions. The field of experience in the above example may have been established by someone telling the person that there are snakes in the garden or some previous incidents of snake sighting that the person might have heard of. These were some of the contributions of Kurt Koffka.

Productive or Problem Solving Thinking:

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Productive thinking or problem solving thinking and learning by insight has been explained very thoroughly by two psychologists, one in America and the other in the European Continent. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, born in 1934, is a psychology professor at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California and is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago. He is noted for his work in the study of happiness, creativity, subjective well-being, and fun, but is best known as the architect of the notion of flow and for his years of research and writing on the topic. He is the author of many books and over 120 articles or book chapters. He interviewed and studied over two thousand creative people and discovered some common elements in them. Some of those were; smart and naïve, playful and disciplined,