The Inventor’s Gestalt

The process of innovation has frequently been held to be an unusual and mysterious phenomenon of our mental life. It has been long regarded as the result of special processes of inspiration that are experienced only by persons of the special grade called men of genius. This mystical account of these phenomena is, however, gradually yielding ground before the growing body of psychological analysis.…

Our mental processes fall into two types; the synthetic, constructive, and creative activities concerned with innovation; the analytical, imitative, and conservative activities concerned with the formulation and imposition of tradition. A comprehensive theory of innovation would involve by necessity all the synthetic activities, but it could not be confined to them because the analytical activities are called into play.… It will now be desirable to give more attention to the details of the experiences involved in the process of invention. The experience is closely associated with the disposition of the mind to see things whole. We do not first perceive all the separate elements of an experience, and then subsequently combine them into an organized group. The whole mass of data is experienced as a unit, more or less satisfactory and complete. Such is the view of an important school of psychologists.… It is a great misfortune that there is no wholly adequate term to apply to this notion. In German the word gestalt is used; in English, configuration : but neither of these terms is sufficiently vivid or certain in its connotation.