Header image from Charles Allan Gilbert’s All Is Vanity (1892).
Each student enters this makerspace with a different history and different goal. Some of you love to read and write, and you look forward to improving your skills and experiencing new texts. Some of you, on the other hand, have hated English classes since you became aware of them, and you want only to escape — by climbing out the back window, maybe, if that’s what it takes.
This class is designed with all of you in mind. Our purpose is not just to read and write; it is, more than anything else, to have you think, and to think about how you think. This idea, thinking about thinking, is metacognition, one of the foundations of learning:
That’s a screenshot of a quotation that you’ll find everywhere, from the syllabus to the wall of the classroom. That “[c]ollateral learning” is more important than any particular poem or book or essay.
Which brings us to the Gestalt effect. To define it, set aside two old ELA terms: inference and implication, which are important skills in reading and writing.
In order to read beyond the superficial details of our texts, and in order to write fluently and effectively, it helps to understand a bit about how the brain creates meaning. The simplest way to approach this is to use that not-so simple term: Gestalt. This is a German word that can be translated into English as “shape,” and it refers to the part of your brain that makes meaning from data.
When we study ourselves, the Gestalt effect is about our perception of the reality in front of us. You process the information given to you in subtly different ways from the people around you, and in here, those differences are important1. We work together to understand what each individual reads and writes. It is a collective effort.
These notes offer analogies for learning. An analogy is, to take the definition verbatim from its Wikipedia entry, “a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target).”
Your brain is an analogy machine:
You are wired to understand information better in context, and analogies work to contextualize meaning. Keep that in mind as you take in the notes below on Gestalt systems.
These notes are adapted from various sources, with commentary folded in2.
1. The Whole Picture
Here is a black and white image. What do you see? What do your peers see?
More importantly, when it snaps into place for you, do you almost hear the click of recognition? That is the Gestalt coming together.
The above image is often used to demonstrate how details coalesce into a bigger picture. Here is an account of one such lecture, and here is a link to Google results. For many of us, the black and white blots do not coalesce until we have the name or, as in the first of those links, a visual guide. Context creates that3.
The image is perceived as a whole, all at once, after you are given some direction. This is the guiding principle for reading and writing in the Humanities: You piece together meaning component by component, and sometimes it is only in the end that the full picture snaps into place. Often, you need help to see that bigger picture. Once you have it, however, it sticks.
2. Filling in the Blanks
In this next example, a triangle will be perceived in picture A, although no triangle has actually been drawn. In pictures B and D the eye will recognize disparate shapes as “belonging” to a single shape, and in C a complete three-dimensional shape is seen, where in actuality no such thing is drawn. This is reification — the way we fill in the blanks to flesh out a complete idea.
The triangle may be easiest to see. The rest are helped by the language we used to name the objects. This is an example of the power of naming: By naming, we grant shape and form to the experiences and ideas we encounter.
Here, B is a black worm wrapped around a white pole; C shows a sphere covered in spikes, much like a mace; D is a snake or sea monster swimming through water, buried beneath the surface at two points.
Recognize that your mind can’t not see these images that way now — not without a supreme effort to break that Gestalt effect. In the same way, it’s only through awareness that you can break your mind’s habits and forge new ones. The more aware you are of the spaces in between, the more you can overcome them.
You can also appreciate that reading and writing rely heavily on implications and inferences. Good writing balances showing and telling according to its audience.
3. Flexibility
Next is flexibility (which is technically called multistability). It is best illustrated by optical illusions like these two. You can almost physically push your mind to switch between perspectives.
That flexibility is required to get anything out of the illusions. The same is true for the reading and writing we do in the Humanities. One must be able to see both the vase and the two faces; one must be able to see both the old lady and the young woman; one must be able to see that Griffin in The Invisible Man is a victim and the villain, or that Romeo and Juliet are victims of fate and, at the same time, responsible for their own deaths; one must see both sides of an argument in order to defend one or the other. Nuance should be the word we keep in mind when we apply this concept to our study of writing, thinking, and reading.
Isolating the cube (known as a Necker cube) invites you to flex this part of your brain, and many folks can feel the effort to snap the planes in and out. Practice pushing the front of the cube to the back. Pull it forward. Then try to flatten the entire image to create a diamond-like 2D shape instead of a 3D one:
Next up: Rorschach ink blots.
Related readings:
For instance, only some of you will find the footnote here that leads you to a German term for that difference and, along the way, a webcomic that will reward the curious. ↩
Wikipedia’s page on Gestalt psychology links to more categories and examples. Always approach Wikipedia as a portal to more information, not an endpoint. Use the information to find primary sources and to inform further research. ↩
One of the fastest ways to snap it into place: Look at the original, unaltered image as published in LIFE magazine in 1965. ↩