Max Wertheimer 

Gestalt psychologists saw our perceptions as wholes that give meaning to parts.  They believed that learning could be active and purposeful, not merely responsive and mechanical, as in Pavlov’s experiments.

 - Psychology Textbook
Gestalt emphasizes that the mind abhors non-sense. http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/gestalt.htm

The focus of Gestalt theory was the idea of "grouping", i.e., characteristics of stimuli cause us to structure or interpret a visual field or problem in a certain way. The primary factors that determine grouping were:
(1) proximity - elements tend to be grouped together according to their nearness
(2) similarity - items similar in some respect tend to be grouped together
(3) closure - items are grouped together if they tend to complete some entity, and
(4) simplicity - items will be organized into simple figures according to symmetry, regularity, and smoothness.
These factors were called the laws of organization and were explained in the context of perception and problem solving.

Example: The classic example of Gestalt principles provided by Wertheimer are children finding the area of parallelograms. As long as the parallelograms are regular figures, a standard procedure can be applied (making lines perpendicular from the corners of the base). However, if a parallelogram with a novel shape or orientation is provided, the standard procedure will not work and children are forced to solve the problem by understanding the true structure of a parallelogram (i.e., the figure can be bisected anywhere if the ends are joined).

Principles:

  1. The learner should be encouraged to discover the underlying nature of a topic or problem (i.e., the relationship among the elements).
  2. Gaps, incongruities, or disturbances are an important stimulus for learning
  3. Instruction should be based upon the laws of organization: proximity, closure, similarity and simplicity. http://tip.psychology.org/wertheim.html
The goal is for clients to become aware of what they are doing, how they are doing it, and how they can change themselves, and at the same time, to learn to accept and value themselves.

Gestalt therapy focuses more on process (what is happening) than content (what is being discussed). The emphasis is on what is being done, thought and felt at the moment rather than on what was, might be, could be, or should be.


 http://www.gestalt.org/yontef.htm