Gestalt

Gestalt is a German word meaning shape or form. The word also bears connotations to creativity (Gestaltung). In English gestalt refers to the concept where an entity's properties cannot be discovered from the total properties of its parts. The more general English equivalents are synergy, holism, emergence, and variations on the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".

• In psychology, Gestalt can refer to:
  • Gestalt psychology (Gestalt theory), and Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy
  • Gestalt therapy
  • The Gestalt effect

• Gestalt was also the name of an environment-query function in Mac OS.

• Gestalt is also a term used in Dungeons and Dragons to represent a warrior/arcane mage multiclass combination or character concept, although the term can be more generally used to describe when the features of two or more classes are combined to create a 'mixed' class at first level (also known as taking apprentice levels). In Dungeons and Dragons v3.5, gestalt is a variant rule from the sourcebook Unearthed Arcana which allows a character to simultaneously take two classes at once, gaining the abilities and strengths of both.

• Fans of the Transformers (and to some degree Hasbro) use the term gestalt to refer to teams of robots which can combine together to form one large robot which is "stronger than the sum of its parts".

• The BBC comedy show Red Dwarf featured an episode in which a Gestalt Entity used the four main characters as its source to become "greater than the sum of its parts."

• Author Theodore Sturgeon (February 26, 1918–May 8, 1985) referred to the term gestalt in his book More Than Human (Farrar & Straus, 1953. International Fantasy Award) to describe a series of characters that together created "a greater being", also implying that this was the next stage in human evolution. Nonetheless the different people that formed the gestalt could be changed for another person with similar characteristics (for example, a person that performed as a "head" could be exchanged for another person as long as he was able to be a "head" and was accepted in the gestalt).

• Author Anne McCaffrey uses the word gestalt to describe mind linkages in her Tower and the Hive series. In this context, gestalt means a connection made between the minds of one or more telepathic or telekinetic people, called Talents, and a generator or other electrical source. This mind-merge enables its participants to do far more together than they could have done separately, and thus illustrates the gestalt principle of "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."