There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.

I’ve decided to skip ‘holistic‘. I don’t know what it means, and I don’t want to know. That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward ‘Gestalt’ and the ‘Twist‘, and lived to tell the tale.

…nobody can stand truth if it is told to him. Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable.

The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled.

I am interested in what I term gestalts; picture circumstances which bring together disparate images or ideas so as to form new meanings and new configurations.

Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt, not just a laundry list of women‘s issues.

The essay form has superceded the novel as the vehicle that best suggests the prevailing apocalyptic gestalt, and as the talisman that is most able to repel the onset of paralysing dread.

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage.

Spirit is love, spirit is connection, inclusive, and that’s what I’m interested in, and that’s what moved me. That’s what I got more and more into as I grew up and as I was in college in the 60’s with consciousness raising and other kind of things, gestalt psychology etc.

I went to a Gestalt therapist and said that I want to be able to at least tell my muscles that aren’t involved that they don’t have to go into spasms too.

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage. Imagine how happy I felt when I got relief from bladder pressure. How long did that happiness last?

I don’t think that we are capable of anything like this many possible colour responses. Instead I argue that the perception of colour differences between two surfaces viewed side-by-side is a gestalt phenomenon.

Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.

My parents are famously not part of the gestalt of the fashion industry.

Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness.

I am not in this world to live up to other people‘s expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.

Most photographs take their cues from advertising, where the priority is high image content for an easy Gestalt reading.

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness.

There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related.