Gestalt Quotes

Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.

You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.

Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness.

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage.

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt, not just a laundry list of women's issues.

My parents are famously not part of the gestalt of the fashion industry.

I've decided to skip 'holistic'. I don't know what it means, and I don't want to know. That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward 'Gestalt' and the 'Twist', and lived to tell the tale.

Surprisingly, Gestalt psychologists have found that when subjected to Ganz fields for long periods of time, we hallucinate. Can empty fields serve as mirrors, not for our exteriors, but for our interiors?

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

...nobody can stand truth if it is told to him. Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable.

Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.

The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled.

To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness.

Spirit is love, spirit is connection, inclusive, and that's what I'm interested in, and that's what moved me. That's what I got more and more into as I grew up and as I was in college in the 60's with consciousness raising and other kind of things, gestalt psychology etc.

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

I am interested in what I term gestalts; picture circumstances which bring together disparate images or ideas so as to form new meanings and new configurations.

The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.

Just take one thing out and the whole palace, the whole edifice of the human mind collapses. Take effort out of it and desiring disappears, imagination disappears, past and future disappear, or take desire out and effort disappears and time disappears and ego disappears. Just take one thing out of the gestalt and the whole gestalt simply disappears; it cannot exist without certain things. Those are the very essentials of it - effort is one of the essentials. Hence all the great Masters of the world have taught about grace.

The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clearcut cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole.

There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related.

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage. Imagine how happy I felt when I got relief from bladder pressure. How long did that happiness last?

Part of my gestalt is that I still feel a little bit like a wallflower. Even in my own life. I talk about myself behind my back.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other.

Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate.

I don't think that we are capable of anything like this many possible colour responses. Instead I argue that the perception of colour differences between two surfaces viewed side-by-side is a gestalt phenomenon.

There are still psychologists who, in a basic misunderstanding, think that gestalt theory tends to underestimate the role of past experience. Gestalt theory tries to differentiate between and-summative aggregates, on the one hand, and gestalten, structures, on the other, both in sub-wholes and in the total field, and to develop appropriate scientific tools for investigating the latter.

The essay form has superceded the novel as the vehicle that best suggests the prevailing apocalyptic gestalt, and as the talisman that is most able to repel the onset of paralysing dread.

Whenever you are in anger, remember yourself. In that very remembering the focus changes, the gestalt changes. You become more and more centred. Anger remains there just on the periphery of your being, but you know now that it is separate from you. You are not angry, you are only a witness to it. Now it is up to you to choose to be angry or not to be angry. You are no more identified; hence the freedom to choose.

In the Germany of the l920s, the Weimar Republic, both orga­nismic biology and Gestalt psychology were part of a larger intellectual trend that saw itself as a protest movement against the increasing fragmentation and alienation of human nature. The entire Weimar culture was characterized by an antimechanistic outlook, a "hunger for wholeness". Organismic biology, Gestalt psychology, ecology, and, later on, general systems theory all grew out of this holistic zeitgeist.

Fortunately I experienced Max Wertheimer's teaching in Berlin and collaborated for over a decade with Wolfgang Köhler. I need not emphasize my debts to these outstanding personalities. The fundamental ideas of Gestalt theory are the foundation of all our investigations in the field of the will, of affection, and of the personality.

Most photographs take their cues from advertising, where the priority is high image content for an easy Gestalt reading.

I am troubled by the devaluing of the word 'design’. I find myself now being somewhat embarrassed to be called a designer. In fact I prefer the German term, Gestalt-Ingenieur. Apple and Vitsoe are relatively lone voices treating the discipline of design seriously in all corners of their businesses. They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.

I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine.

I went to a Gestalt therapist and said that I want to be able to at least tell my muscles that aren't involved that they don't have to go into spasms too.