Cognititve Psych Reflection and Post

In class this week, we talked briefly about the connection between Gestalt Psychology and Cognitive Psych in general, and if cognitive psych today is Gestalt at all. We said that it is not, or at least not very much. However, that does not mean that Gestalt is dead or that it is still not engaging interest and producing research. Here is a link to a society for the promotion of Gestalt. There are a lot of interesting links: http://www.gestalttheory.net/. But just as cognitive psych experienced a rebirth, I think that Gestalt psychology, or at least aspects of Gestalt theory, are experiencing a resurgence in contemporary society. There is great interest in holisting care and alternative medicine among the public, and growing acceptance of it in the medical community. There is also a growing body of research on spirituality, etc in psychological journals and how these various aspects influence health. There is more emphasis on lifestyle change (e.x. diet and exercise) in the prevention and treatment of obesity, heart disease, etc. There is a growing awareness that the whole person must be treated, not simply one part of their body or the disease.


I was surprised to learn that behaviorism had only been dominant in the United States and it hadn't experiences much influence abroad. A part of it was probably some unique American fascination with facts over theory, but I wonder if even this is a valid statement. Ideas come to America: Wundt, Binet, the Gestaltists, Bartlett, etc. But why is it that American ideas don't seem to be spread widely abroad. Perhaps this is a narrow view that I'm talking and that American ideas have spread, but our readings simply didn't focus on that. I also found Mandler's assertion that John B. Watson implanted the seeds of behaviorism's death even its birth surprising as well. It makes a lot of sense. These was such an emphasis on animal research and equating humans with animals that our higher mental process that do exist were necessarily left out. While behaviorism did generate a lot of good research, it was only so long before its shortcomings would be realized and psychologists would have recourse to more cognitive explanations of human behavior and experience.