Word: gestalt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Gestalt Antedated...
Leaving the romantic interest for fairer game, one might turn to James's anticipations of Gestalt psychology. The torrents of impression by which the mind is inundated at every moment produce a narrow and highly select conscious experience. This struck James as extraordinary, and he marvelled at man's routine feats of selective attention...
...mind chooses to suit itself, and decides what particular sensation shall be held more real and valid than all the rest." This is the essence of the Gestalt doctrine of perceptual constancies. of course, in proposing such a theory, James was rejecting the passive, reactive, blank tablet model of the mind, which one associates with the Anglo-American tradition...