Summarize the disagreements that the Gestaltists had with Wundt’s experimental program, the structuralists, and the behaviorists.
Psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental process and behavior of an individual and how it is affected by internal and external environment. Psychologists explore and study various fields such as intelligence, emotions, personality, brain functioning, interpersonal relationships and many more to analyze the psychology of a person.
Father of psychology Wilhelm Wundt and his followers tried to study structure of mind by analyzing the process of senses. Two approaches were framed by Wundt and his followers, which was called structuralism and Introspection.
Structuralism is the basic study of perception and sensation, which develops our conscious. In order to study this concept feeling, sensations, emotions and views were taken into account by psychologist. Introspection is the examination of one’s own feelings and conscious thoughts. This approach was studied by observing ones mental state.
Wundt’s approach was criticized because of unscientific methods. Another new approach called Gestalt approach was framed by a group of psychologists. Gestalt means “whole pattern” in German. This approach explains that, a perception cannot be studied by breaking up into individual element but by analyzing the situation as a whole pattern.