Max Wertheimer: biography of one of the founders of Gestalt theory.

A summary of the life of Max Wertheimer, one of the key psychologists and researchers of Gestalt.

There are many currents within psychology, and Gestalt is one of the most important, with more than a century of existence.

On this occasion we will focus on the life of we will focus on the life of one of the creators of this school, Max Wertheimer, reviewing his life episodes.reviewing his most important life episodes, the publications and researches that had more impact on other authors, and other events of interest.

Brief biography of Max Wertheimer

The author Max Wertheimer was born in the year 1880 in the city of Prague, at that time belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.. He belonged to a well-to-do family of Jewish origin. His father, Wilhelm Wertheimer, was a teacher and economist. Rosa Zwicker, his mother, had enjoyed the privileges of an elite upbringing. The couple had another son, Walter, in addition to Max.

Therefore, the educational environment at the Wertheimer home was optimal for the development of the young children. An atmosphere of intellectual and discussion, including political and philosophical discussions, was fostered. Both Walter and Max were also provided with a classical and musical education. From a very early age, they were already reading authors such as the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

As for formal education, Max Wertheimer attended a Piarist, and therefore Catholic, school, even though he was Jewish, which was relatively common in these countries. After completing the early stages of his education, he attended the Royal Imperial New City, before entering university.

Although he initially enrolled in law at the University of Prague, he later decided to focus on what he was really interested in, which was philosophy and human behavior, i.e. psychology, so he decided to move to the University of Berlin to formalize these studies.He decided to move to the University of Berlin to formalize his studies.

Thus he had the opportunity to share an institution with a whole generation of future figures in psychology and other fields, among whom were, apart from Max Wertheimer himself, others such as the ethnomusicologist, Erich von Hornbostel, or the experimental psychologists, Georg Elias Müller, Friederich Schumann and Carl Stumpf.

Max continued his training, this time at the University of Würzburg, where he completed his doctoral thesis, studying the polygraphor lie detector, and its possible applications for assessing the credibility of testimony.

The beginning of his professional career

Already as a doctor, Max Wertheimer began teaching and research.. He began working at an institute in Frankfurt and later moved to the university in the same city. From 1903 to 1916, he would develop his career in this region of Germany. During this period he was also called up to fight in the First World War, reaching the rank of captain.

The second stage in his professional life took place at the Berlin Psychological Institute, where he spent no less than 13 years. Throughout those years, he met Anna Caro, with whom he married and had four children.. The marriage began in 1923 and ended in 1942, when they divorced.

As for his work in Berlin, it lasted until 1929, when he got a teaching position at the University of Frankfurt, so he returned to that institution. Max Wertheimer taught at that institution, while continued some of the research that he had begun at the University of Berlin and that would be the beginning of Gestalt psychology..

But in 1933 something happened that would mark not only his life, but that of most people in Europe, and practically the world. The Nazis came to power in Germany.

Exile to the United States

Max Wertheimer was aware that, coming from a Jewish family, his figure as a teacher and even as a citizen, was about to be called into question in Nazi Germany. He therefore he was determined to leave Europe for the United States.Thanks to the facilities that the consulate of this country in Prague gave to many emigrants, he decided to leave Europe for the United States.

Thus, in September 1933, Max Wertheimer and his family arrived in New York. To all intents and purposes, they became U.S. citizens, so that from that moment on, he had both that nationality and the German one, which was that of his homeland.

In addition, thanks to the professional career he had accumulated, he had no problem to rejoin again as a teacher, this time at the New School for Social Research, which would be the place where he would develop the rest of his career. Other pioneers of Gestalt psychology, such as Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kölher, had also emigrated to America.

In his new period in the United States, he was in close contact both with these authors and with others who remained in Europe..

Productive thinking and later years

Max Wertheimer's health was seriously compromised, so that, since he had to leave Germany at the age of 53, he was only to live another decade in his new country. During those years, In addition to working as a professor and resuming his research, he devoted himself to preparing what was to be his only work, entitled "Productive Thinking", a volume designed to explain thinking processes from the perspective of Gestalt psychology, of which Max Wertheimer was one of the creators..

This volume was intended to explain thought processes from the perspective of Gestalt psychology, of which Max Wertheimer was one of the creators. He distinguished between productive and reproductive thinking. While the first represented the mental capacity to generate new ideas, the other is responsible for the repetition of data already existing in the brain.

To generate productive thinking, the starting point is the knowledge that the subject has stored. From this data, a reasoning process is carried out that gives rise to these new ideas that did not previously exist in his mind. Max Wertheimer used the principles of classical logic to be able to understand any issue to its deepest level.

Likewise, stated that, according to productive thinking, it was not a good idea to follow closed rules in a stubborn way to try to reach the resolution of a problem, as they can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help to that end.Sometimes they can be more of a hindrance than a help to that end.

The postulates that Max Wertheimer left in his work, Productive Thinking, continue to be of great relevance today in matters related to the generation of knowledge schemes.

This was the last great contribution of this author, before he finally died in 1943, just after publishing this book. The cause of death was a Heart attack. He was 63 years old.

Max Wertheimer and Gestalt

But, no doubt, Max Wertheimer's reputation is linked to the foundation of the Gestalt school of psychology.. The basis of this current is that perception uses mechanisms to automatically recognize patterns in sets of simple elements. Basically, these patterns can be based on the proximity of these elements, on their similarity, on the continuity they have, on the figure they create with respect to the background or if they generate a closure.

Max Wertheimer first thought in these terms in 1910, when he was teaching in the city of Frankfurt. He was on a train trip when he noticed the way in which he perceived and grouped certain visual stimuli without thinking about it. This was the origin of one of the most important currents in psychology.

Another of the principles he established for Gestalt is that the final result generated by the group of elements is different from them. That is, the pattern generated by the group gives rise to a construct that is beyond the parts that compose it, it has an identity by itself.

The Gestalt current, developed by Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, arose in opposition to the studies of perception of the prevailing school of the time, which was elementalist and structuralist.whose leading exponents were Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener.

The phi phenomenon of apparent motion

Max Wertheimer's other great contribution was the description of a curious phenomenon, baptized the phi phenomenon.. What this author was referring to is the perception of an apparent movement, which in reality does not take place, when lights located on opposite sides alternate, turning on one when the other is turned off.

This alternation generates an illusion of movement in the viewer, who can perceive how the light is moving from one side to the other, since his mind automatically completes a pattern, interpreting that it is a single light that is constantly moving its position, when in reality there are two lights that blink alternately.

Bibliographical references:

• Evans, R. B. (2005). Form and Substance: Max Wertheimer's Life and Work. PsycCRITIQUES,
• King, D. B., Wertheimer, M. (2005). Max Wertheimer and gestalt theory. Transaction Publishers.
• Luchins, A.S., Luchins, E.H. (1987). Max Wertheimer in America: 1933-1943: I. Gestalt Theory.
• Wertheimer, M. (2014). Max Wertheimer centennial celebration in Germany. History of psychology.
• Wertheimer, M. (2020). Max Wertheimer Productive Thinking. Springer.