Gestalt Theory of Visual Perception
The Gestalt theorists were the first group of psychologists to systematcially study perceptual organisation around the 1920’s, in Germany. They were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ernst Mach, and particularly of Christian von Ehrenfels and the research work of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, and Kurt Lewin.
The coming to power of national socialism substantially interrupted the fruitful scientific development of Gestalt theory in the German-speaking world; Koffka, Wertheimer, Köhler and Lewin emigrated, or were forced to flee, to the United States where they continued to work, in spite of the dominant theoretical field for that time, of behaviourism.