The term “Gestalt psychology” denotes a movement in psychology that began at the turn of the 20th century as the Berlin School. Christian von Ehrenfels, who in 1890 introduced the term “Gestalt” into psychology, was its founder; Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka were its chief representatives (all of whom emigrated after 1933). Wolfgang Metzger summarized its teachings in Germany.

Gestalt psychology arose in opposition to the mechanistic views of association psychology and psychophysics. Its main thesis was the old one that the whole is gre…