Max Wertheimer

Max Wertheimer
File:Max Wertheimer.gif
Born	April 15, 1880 (1880-04-15) Prague, Austria-Hungary
Died	October 12, 1943 (1943-10-13) New Rochelle, New York
Nationality	Austria-Hungary
Alma mater	University of Prague
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology
Doctoral students	Rudolf Arnheim

Max Wertheimer (April 15, 1880 – October 12, 1943) was an Austro-Hungarian-born psychologist who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler.

Wertheimer obtained his PhD in 1904 under Oswald Külpe, and then began his intellectual career teaching in Frankfurt. For a short time he left Frankfurt to work at the Berlin Psychological Institute, but returned in 1929 as a full professor. Wertheimer eventually ended up at the New School for Social Research in New York, a position he held until his death.

Max Wertheimer is known for his work Productive Thinking, as well as his idea of Phi Phenomenon. Both contributed to his collaboration on Gestalt psychology.

Early life

Max Wertheimer was born on April 15, 1880 in Prague, then part of the Bohemian Austria-Hungary. Max was born to Wilhelm and Rosa Wertheimer. Second to his brother Walter. Wilhelm Wertheimer was a successful educator, as well as financier. Rosa Wilhelm, born Rosa Zwicker, had a rich classical education. The Wertheimers were active in the Jewish community in which they lived. The Wertheimer household was extremely intellectual, therefore Max received education from both his parents; he engaged in political and educational discussions at home, as well as taking piano and violin lessons. After he received one of Baruch Spinoza’s books as a gift, he developed an interest towards philosophy. He felt that he and Spinoza shared a culture and common traits.

Max began his formal education at age five, at a private elementary school maintained by the Piarist order of the Roman Catholic Church. It was not uncommon at this time for Jewish children to receive educations from the Catholic Church at this time in central Europe. At age ten, Max graduated from the Piarist Grammer School and enrolled in the Royal Imperial New City German State High School where he could expect to obtain a degree that would qualify him for admittance to a University. Due to the diverse courses offered by the University, Max began to contemplate his future, and realized his deep fascination with philosophy. Max first started studying law at Charles University, where he also explored other fields such as philosophy, music, physiology, and psychology. After a year, Max left and enrolled in University of Berlin where he shifted his study to philosophy. At Berlin, Max was able to work in the company of notable figures such as Carl Stumpf, Friederich Schumann, Georg Elias Müller, and Erich von Hornbostel. Later on in 1903 he got his PhD from the University of Würzburg. There he completed research on the lie detector.

Later life

Max Wertheimer began his academic career at an institute in Frankfurt, later to become the University of Frankfurt. Max left Frankfurt from 1916 to 1929 to pursue a job at the Berlin Psychological Institute but returned to Frankfurt in 1929 as a full professor, where he stayed until 1933. In 1923, while teaching in Berlin, Wertheimer married Anna Caro (called Anni), a physician’s daughter, with whom he had four children: Rudolf (who died in infancy), Valentin, Michael and Lise. They divorced in 1942.

Wertheimer represented his country in World War I as a captain in the army. After coming back from the war he gave lectures and pursued his research on perception and gestalt in the University of Berlin until 1933. But in 1933, dramatic changes in Germany’s regime encouraged or convinced Wertheimer to leave Germany; he heard Hitler’s declarations on the media and he felt his Jewish roots were not going to be tolerated or accepted by the government directed by Adolf Hitler. So before Hitler rose to power, the Wertheimer family joined the other German emigres and moved to the United States. The Wertheimers’ emigration was arranged through the U.S. consulate in Prague, and he and his wife and their children arrived in New York harbor on September 13, 1933. The family became citizens as well; that’s why Max Wertheimer is referred to as a German-American psychologist. Due to the war, and the mass exodus of Germany's intellectuals, the collaborative work of the three Gestalt psychologists was interrupted. Both Wertheimer and Koffka were assigned to war-related research, while Kohler was appointed the director of an anthropoid research station on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. The three men reunited after the war ended and continued further research on the experiments.

Along with his move to America, Max accepted a professional position at age fifty-three in New York City at the New School for Social Research. The New School was only fourteen years-old when Max got the chance to teach various courses there. Max remained at the New School for the last decade of his life. He remained in touch with his European colleagues, many of whom had also emigrated to America. Koffka was teaching at Smith College; Kohler at Swarthmore College; and Lewin at Cornell University and the University of Iowa. Although in declining health, he continued to work on his research of problem-solving, what he preferred to call “productive thinking.” He completed his only book, "Productive Thinking" on the subject in late September 1943. Max died of a heart attack just three weeks after the completion of his book at his home in New Rochelle, New York. Wertheimer is interred in Beechwoods Cemetery, also in New Rochelle. Max is father of Micheal Wertheimer, a successful psychologist.

Phi phenomenon

Max Wertheimer began the formal founding of Gestalt psychology in 1910 as he began experiments on the phi phenomenon. He published these experiments in a paper titled "Experimental Studies on the Perception of Movement". The phi phenomenon is apparent movement caused by alternating light positions. Wertheimer illustrated this phenomenon on an apparatus he built that utilized two discrete lights on different locations. Although the lights are stationary, flashing the lights at succeeding time intervals causes the retina to perceive the light as moving. Wertheimer worked with partners Koffka and Köhler to collect data which ultimately led to their launch of the Gestalt movement. Their findings further demonstrated that the quality of the whole is different from the sum of the parts. The explanation of the phi phenomena was that movement is perceived because the eye itself moves in response to the successive flashes of light. The movement an observer experiences is based on feedback from the moving eye.

Productive thinking

As a Gestalt theorist, Max Wertheimer was interested in perception, but additionally interested in thought. Max published his ideas in his book "Productive Thinking" (1945) before his death in 1943. Wertheimer was interested in making a distinction between reproductive thinking and productive thinking. Reproductive thinking is associated with repetition, conditioning, habits or familiar intellectual territory. Productive thinking is the product of new ideas and breakthroughs. Productive thinking is insight-based reasoning. Wertheimer argued that only insightful reasoning could bring true understanding of conceptual problems and relationships. Wertheimer encouraged training in traditional logic. He believed traditional logic stimulated thinking. However, he believed that logic alone did not give rise to productive thinking. He believed creativity was also crucial to engage in positive thinking. In Productive Thinking, similar to his lectures, Wertheimer used concrete examples to illustrate his principles. Wertheimer used this illustrations to demonstrate the transition from S1, a state where nothing really seems to make sense, to S2, where everything seems clear and the concept grasped. He points out in "Productive Thinking" that solving a problem by blind obedience to rules prevents real understanding of the problems. He believes that this blind obedience forestalls a person from uncovering the solution. Max Wertheimer's ideas of productive thinking are of continuing relevance in modern ideas of schemas, plans, and knowledge structures today.

Gestalt theory

Gestalt, in the closest English definition of the term, is translated potentially as configuration, form, holistic, structure, and pattern. Max Wertheimer is often credited with proposing the idea of Gestalt Theory, along with his close associates Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. Gestalt psychology rebelled against structuralism and behaviorism. According to Gestalt psychology perception is a whole. In this sense holistic perception can shape vision and other senses of an individual. Wertheimer’s cooperative work on gestalt psychology with his colleagues in the New School was seen as an opposition and an alternative to behaviorism. He started the cognitive school of psychology. His thoughts and findings also challenged structuralism and atomism, since he and other gestalt psychologists were more concerned about the whole rather than small structures or fragments of an object like an atom. Wolfgang Köhler’s famous quote: “ The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” can help us understanding the basic ideas of Gestalt psychology. Max Wertheimer, on the other hand, explains the theory like this: “There are wholes, the behavior 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.”

Publications

Wertheimer, M. (1912). Experimentelle Studien u¨ber das Sehen von Bewegung [Experimental studies on the seeing of motion]. Zeitschrift fu¨r Psychologie, 61, 161–265. Wertheimer, M. (1922). Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, I: Prinzipielle Bemerkungen [Investigations in Gestalt theory: I. The general theoretical situation]. Psychologische Forschung, 1, 47–58. Wertheimer, M. (1923). Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, II. [Investigations in Gestalt Theory: II. Laws of organization in perceptual forms]. Psychologische Forschung, 4, 301–350. Wertheimer, M. (1938a). The general theoretical situation. In W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology (pp. 12–16). London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1922) Wertheimer, M. (1938b). Gestalt theory. In W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology (pp. 1–11). London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1924) Wertheimer, M. (1938c). Laws of organization in perceptual forms. In W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology (pp. 71–94). London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1923) Wertheimer, M. (1945). Productive thinking. New York, NY: Harper. Also by his son:

• Wertheimer, Michael (1996). A Contemporary Perspective on the Psychology of Productive Thinking. University of Boulder Colorado.

See also

• Gestalt psychology
• Berlin School of experimental psychology
• Kurt Koffka
• Wolfgang Köhler
• Phi phenomenon

Sources

• Michael Wertheimer, A Brief History of Psychology. 4th edition. Fort Worth TX: Harcourt Brace, 2000.
• American Psychological Association. Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. New York: APA and Ehrlbaum, 2000.
• D. Brett King and Michael Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005.
• Sills, D. L., & Merton, R. K. (1968). Max Wertheimer. International encyclopedia of the social sciences (pp. 522–527). New York: Macmillan.
• Cherry, K. (n.d.). Max Wertheimer Biography. Psychology - Complete Guide to Psychology for Students, Educators & Enthusiasts. Retrieved February 25, 2012
• Cherry, K. (n.d.). Perceptual Organization - Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization. Psychology - Complete Guide to Psychology for Students, Educators & Enthusiasts. Retrieved February 25, 2012

External links

• International Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications - GTA
• Short biographical articles on Wertheimer, et al.
• Art, Design and Gestalt Theory
• On Max Wertheimer and Pablo Picasso
• On Being Wertheimer's Student