The concepts of figure and ground in Gestalt therapy play a very important, system-forming and meaning-forming role. It is important for every person to understand about figure and ground as perception and its features, who may one day be faced with their own need (joke:) in fact, over the course of one day we form figures thousands of times from a somehow - more or less accurately - perceived background ).
So, what is the figure and what is the ground?
While we are talking about abstract concepts, then, for example, a sheet of paper or a glowing screen becomes the background, and the circle or triangle depicted on them becomes, of course, a figure.
Brain teaser:
Now the case is a little more complicated. A man walks along an autumn street, slips on a maple leaf, stumbles, falls into a puddle, but has not yet risen. What is the figure in this picture and what is the background?
In fact, figure and background depend on perception - and only on it. A person can currently:
1) look for what caused the fall - and find a maple leaf. The reason, that is, the leaf, becomes a figure, the street, autumn, a puddle, a soiled suit, a leaden gray sky, the surrounding people - the background.
2) pay attention to the low temperature of the water in the puddle (bodily sensation “cold!”). In this case, the figure is a feeling of one’s own body, coldness, a desire to correct (“remove”) this unpleasant and dangerous condition to health as quickly as possible. The background is everything else.
3) get angry at the puddle and its inappropriate location. If she hadn’t been here, then there might have been problems too. As a result, the puddle is the figure, the soiled clothes are the leaf, the street is the background.
4) seek help from others - who would help you get up. Then the closest person becomes a “figure”, and everything else becomes the background.
Have you noticed what all the options have in common?
This is a need.
In fact, it is not the puddle itself, the leaf, the new suit or the nearest person that becomes the figure or the background, but the person (subject) chooses which of these he needs most now.
For example, these could be figures such as:
- the desire to get help, - the need to return the body to a warm and dry state, - the search for a place where you can eliminate the consequences of a fall, - your own responsibility (in the form of memories of things that await further, and because of which it is not possible now to completely resolve the problem) , - the need to be good (beautiful, accepted by others, rejected), and any others.
Figure and ground in Gestalt therapy and in Gestalt psychology are associated with two other concepts:
1. The concept of a field (a mental field organized in the best possible way, as far as conditions at a given moment generally allow).
2. The concept of the process of formation and destruction of gestalts.
At the same time, if the figure is a certain need, then the background is a set of field characteristics that are not included in the “figure” (not identified by a person as an actual need). And this, in addition to a large part of physical reality (“street, lamppost, pharmacy”), is also a huge part of intraorganismic, physiological reality (we are not aware most of the time how we breathe, how we sit, how our heart beats, how our stomach rumbles, which muscles are tense and which are relaxed), and also:
- Current states and characteristics of oneself and the environment that are NOT necessary (temporarily displaced as irrelevant),
— Unfinished business (see research by Bluma Volfovna Zeigarnik, “Zeigarnik effect”),
— Past experience, skills, automatisms.
Scientific activity
The beginning of Wolfgang Köhler's career can be considered in 1909, when the psychologist defended his doctoral dissertation with Karl Stumpf. Next, the professor went to the University of Frankfurt. From 1913 to 1920, Köhler conducted research on the habits and character of great apes within the island of Tenerife. A psychologist went to the island at the suggestion of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Six months after the professor settled in the Canary Islands, the First World War began. Köhler claimed that it was not yet possible for him to return to Germany, while some of his German colleagues returned to their homeland without any problems.
This prompted one of his colleagues to suggest that psychologist Wolfgang Köhler was engaged in espionage for Germany, and that the research work was just a cover. The fact that the professor hid a radio transmitter in the attic of his home was used as evidence. Köhler justified the presence of such a device by the fact that through it he transmitted information about the movement of Allied ships. No other evidence was found to support the theory, and it was subsequently completely refuted. The psychologist reflected the results of his work in his work “Study of the Intelligence of Apes,” published in 1917. The second edition was published in 1924, the works were translated into English and French. Nobody knows what really happened there, but the fact remains: Wolfgang Köhler spent 7 long years on the island of Tenerife studying the intelligence of monkeys. The published book confirms this. However, the question of who Wolfgang Köhler was, a spy or a scientist, remained open.
What is Gestalt?
The concept of “gestalt” comes from the German language and has no direct equivalent in Russian. It means that things are placed or collected together as a whole (whole image). In psychology, gestalt is described as a pattern or configuration. In this context, Gestalt encompasses the human mind and human behavior in general.
Early work on Gestalt theory focused on perception, with particular emphasis on the formation of a visual perception called illusion.
Gestalt theory has played a role in areas of psychology that seek to better understand the brain and explain social behavior. Many of the basic concepts of Gestalt psychology are difficult to define and evaluate experimentally.
Despite criticism of the theory, Gestalt psychology has had a serious influence on psychology in general.
Personal life
In his mid-twenties, Wolfgang Köhler faced serious family problems. The professor divorced his wife and preferred a young student from Sweden. This state of affairs infuriated his ex-wife, and Wolfgang was deprived of all contact with his children, of whom he had four. This difficult situation left its mark on the psychologist’s health; his hands began to tremble, especially severely during periods of excitement. The workers of the laboratory in which Koehler worked determined his mood every morning by his hands.
International recognition
In the 1925-1926 academic year, the professor gave lectures at Harvard and Clark University. An interesting fact is that, in addition to his lectures, Koehler taught tango to students.
The professor received a truly worldwide name after a series of large-scale studies and experiments that were aimed at studying the perception of the environment and the intelligence of chimpanzees. After this, Köhler was appointed director of the Institute of Psychology, which operates at the university in Berlin. It was at this place that the professor explored the theory of Gestalt and already in 1929 he published the manifesto of Gestalt psychology - a book that most fully reflected the views of the new direction. His co-authors were K. Koffka, M. Wertheimer. An important stage in Koehler’s career was in 1938, when a work entitled “The Role of Values in the World of Facts” was published.
Homecoming
Only in 1920 did Köhler return to Germany and in 1922 received the position of professor of psychology, where he worked until 1935. Such a prestigious position went to the psychologist for his merits, namely for the publication of the book “Physical Gestalts at Rest and in a Stationary State.” The difficult situation in the country forced Wolfgang to resign in 1935. The Nazis began to actively interfere in university affairs and research. That is why Koehler was forced to resign and move to live in America.
Decline of a career
The German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler left his native country in 1935; the professor’s conflict with the new regime contributed to his emigration. It all started with the fact that the professor openly criticized the fascist government at one of his lectures, after which a group of Nazis burst into the audience. But Köhler’s criticism of the regime did not end there. Later, the professor wrote a letter to a Berlin newspaper, where he was indignant at the injustice of the expulsion of Jewish professors from German universities. After the letter was published in the newspaper, Köhler expected that the Gestapo would come to him in the evening, but reprisals never followed and the professor was given the opportunity to leave the country without noise. After emigrating to the States, Koehler got a job as a teacher at a Pennsylvania college and even wrote several works.
By 1955, Wolfgang was based at the Institute for Advanced Study in the United States. Painstaking work and numerous studies helped him three years later to become a professor of psychology at Dartmouth College. Already in 1956, Koehler was awarded the “Outstanding Contribution to Science” award by the American Psychological Association and was soon elected president of this organization.
Who founded Gestalt therapy?
German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Fritz Perls went to Frankfurt to become Kurt Goldstein's assistant at the Institute studying brain-damaged soldiers. Goldstein was a researcher of Gestalt theory.
Perls became interested in some Freudian theories and methods and tried to develop his own system of psychotherapy. He came under the influence of many psychologists, psychoanalysts and existential philosophers who directly or indirectly studied the principles of Gestalt and Gestalt therapy.
At an institute for the study of brain-damaged soldiers, he met his wife, Laura Perls, who was also studying Gestalt therapy. The goal of Gestalt therapy was to help patients become aware of basic internal and external sensations in order to better respond to situations.
Therapists help clients focus on the here and now rather than past experiences. Once clients can fully experience the present, it will be easier for them to confront past conflicts or, as Perls called them, incomplete (unclosed) gestalts.
Köhler's theories
As we already know, Köhler began his career with experimental studies of the intellectual abilities and behavioral characteristics of chimpanzees. It was this research work that led the psychologist to one of his most significant discoveries. This is insight, or illumination.
The professor created certain situations in which chimpanzees, in order to achieve a goal, had to solve the problems facing them and look for workarounds. The actions of animals were called two-phase because they consisted of two specific components. For example, the first action of a chimpanzee is to use one object to get another, which would help the animal solve the problem it faces. The simplest example is the following: a monkey, using a small stick that lies in a cage, must get a long one that lies a little further. This is the first action performed by an animal to achieve a goal. The next step is to use the resulting tools to achieve the primary goal. The target was a banana, which was quite far from the chimpanzee.
