Preface

I OFFER this book to the patient reader, feeling more than ever how much I have been inferior to my task. Nothing is easier than to criticize it. Gestalt psychology, the subject matter I have tried to present, resembles in 1928 a promising start more than a complete achievement. At all events it would have been difficult to introduce it adequately. To present it skillfully in a foreign language was far beyond my linguistic ability. I have done all that I possibly could. The greatest difficulty, however, is that only certain simple and almost crude concepts of gestalt psychology would yield to my painful efforts to convey them through the medium of English. Under these circumstances the optimism of my excellent publisher is responsible if the incomplete portrait of an incomplete thing is here recommended to public consideration.

Certain other trends in contemporary psychology are discussed in connection with gestalt psychology. The first question a foreign psychologist has to answer in America is, of course: How do you like behaviorism? This vigorous school has energetically drawn certain lines beyond which a psychologist should never go. And, then, indicating the only direction that all psychologists must take, it has left little place open for free discussion of theory and research; in other words, it has developed into such a fundamentalism that I felt myself forced to clear my way for a certain liberalism to which I am accustomed in science.

With introspectionism things are not entirely different. In this psychological school a scheme of procedure, which is just the opposite to my own, has become dominant. This is unfortunate. If behaviorists should refuse to take account of this book because in it direct experience is employed and referred to without apology, introspectionists would not treat it any better, since my use of experience, from their point of view, is not of the right sort. I have had to explain, then, not only how I could eat the forbidden fruit in spite of all commandments, but also why I took the common ware from the street and from the market-place instead of buying the standardized and sterilized products which introspection would furnish from its cultivated orchard. It was my aim, however, to make this discussion productive and, in addition to criticism, the reader will find some of our own rules of procedure expressed in these first chapters. If the fighting spirit should be found to prevail in some paragraphs, I beg you to remember that, as in politics, we sometimes strike at a system though we are fond of its defenders.

Certain psychologists, both in the United States and in England, will recognize their own ideas or, at least, find some similarities to them, in these chapters. Instead of treating all the instances of this convergence and agreement in detail, I only mention the theory of “emergent evolution” and the doctrine of Professor Whitehead’s imposing work, with all the respect which is due them both. Perhaps Professor R. M. Ogden will allow me to call him a gestalt psychologist. I have not been able to see quite clearly to what degree there is agreement with certain other eminent psychologists. In Professor Bentley’s well-known book, for example, his term “organization” sometimes seems to come very near the concept of gestalt. But there must be some difference, since on the other hand, the basic doctrine of introspective psychology seems to be preserved in a manner incompatible with gestalt psychology. Future development will undoubtedly show whether or not our views can be brought to a full congruence.

Dr. Mortimer Adler deserves the reader’s thanks as well as my own for the skill and tact which he displayed in the correction of my text, which was finally revised by K. Koffka.

My thanks are due to Mrs. L. Köhler, without whose help my work would have been all but impossible.

To Max Wertheimer I should like to dedicate something of which I could be prouder than these ten chapters. I hope he will accept them, however, as a testimony of my good will and of our friendship.

W. K.

Ormor, Sweden, August 12, 1928.