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Arnheim, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory.

Article Excerpt
Verstegen, I. (2005). Arnheim, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory. Vienna, Austria: Springer-Verlag, Vienna, vii + 188 pp., $49.95 (softcover).

Verstegen's book is "an attempt to bring into a single coherent statement" (p. v) the Gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim's theory of the psychology of art. Arnheim's response to Verstegen's description of the project to him seems to have been an endorsement of it (pp. v-vi). The success in threading together the sections of Arnheim's corpus at the same time makes salient some issues of concern for those phenomenological psychologists who have a strong interest in Gestalt psychology.

Over and beyond that, Verstegen's book is an appeal to the modern psychology of the twenty-first century to re-consider the validity and the value of Gestalt psychology's research contributions that had their debut with Max Wertheimer's 1912 publication on the phi phenomenon. My discussion of Verstegen's book first will cover the theme of perception that undergirds Gestalt psychology. Verstegen focuses on this theme in his book. I then will examine the associated topics of isomorphism and art's relation to therapy that Verstegen surveys.

Perception

Arnheim positions perception as the basic dimension of existence. This is clear from Verstegen's presentation of his thought and from the experience of any reader who is familiar with Arnheim's writings. At first glance, Arnheim's review of perception seems to echo Merleau-Ponty's treatises on the primordiality of perception--and so is set the attraction for phenomenologists. It is the phenomenologists for whom tolls the bell of perception.

Reflection on Arnheim's Gestaltist claim of perception's origination of, and structuring and re-structuring of, thinking and of development, however, discloses the ambiguous-for-phenomenologists character of the Gestaltist conviction of perception as matrix for thinking and development. Examination of assumptions adds to the disclosure.

Thinking and Development

Arnheim characterizes thinking as spatial. Verstegen says here, "in the case of a logical problem, spatial modeling provides the synthetic judgment of the necessity of the solution. Arnheim gives the example of the logical syllogism ..." (p. 23).

There can be supportive comment here. Euler circles and the even more versatile, according to some, Venn diagrams for correctness in the consecution of the logical syllogism are ready-to-hand and they would seem, through their two dimensional spatiality, to corroborate Arnheim's position on the efficacy of spatiality for the operation of thought's august logical syllogism.

With reference to Arnheim's (1969) book Visual Thinking, Verstegen writes, "the basic thesis of Visual Thinking is that spatially perceivable relations provide the analogies of productive thinking" (p. 161). The characterization of thought as spatial is interesting, but positioning thought in a perception-driven package arouses reservations.

For phenomenologists, Merleau-Ponty has affirmed the spatiality significant to body-subject, "everything throws us back on to the organic relations between subject and space, to that...

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