We are delighted to invite you to the 24th Scientific Conference of the Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications (GTA) organised jointly with the Institute of Musicology of Humboldt University and the BSP Business & Law School Berlin.
The conference venues are
“Gestalt – Imagery – Action” addresses structured wholes in the phenomenally given (Gestalt), multi-modal experiences without a direct sensory input (Imagery) and forms of action that may arise from experienced Gestalts and mental imagery (Action). Of particular interest are the mediations that occur between these dimensions.
In the 1920s, Gestalts were discussed as principles of self-organization in human thinking and perception, in behaviour, and in the physical world. Carl Stumpf and the founders of the Berlin School of Gestalt Theory Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka developed a new theory of mind, anchored in psychology and a scientific world-view. Kurt Lewin developed a Gestalt theory of action. Perceptual psychologist Rudolf Arnheim adopted Gestalt theory for art and visual studies.
One hundred years after the thriving decade of Gestalt Theory in Berlin, this conference motto honours these ground-breaking scientific traditions whilst coupling them with current research paradigms. Current studies of mental imagery, of cognition and action and of the ecology of perception (affordance) draw on aspects of Gestalt theory, but rarely reflect on its ethical and holistic implications. The conference aims to critically engage these developments which unfold in a highly dynamic environment, spurred by computational and AI innovations. They complicate theory-driven approaches and invite us to reconsider the relevance of Gestalt concepts in general.
It will also create a space for students and for upstart researchers to articulate themselves in various formats. And it invites the public to share knowledge about Gestalt research in Berlin during a city walk.
The conference program will comprise key-note lectures, panel discussions, workshops, poster sessions, visits to historic sound archives, an easy listening session and a concert. We also plan a guided walk to the landmark sites of historic Gestalt Research in Berlin Mitte.
The conference languages are German and English.
Stay tuned to the page, which is constantly updated with details about the meeting and events.
The veterinary anatomical theatre on Campus Nord of Charité can only be reached on foot. Access is either from Luisenstraße, Philippstraße or Hannoversche Straße (highlighted in green on the attached map; the theatre is building no. 3).
Luisenstraße can be reached with bus line 147 (stop is “Charité Campus Mitte).
In der gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie ist die Wahrnehmung in der Praxis häufig primär auf Sehen und kognitive Analyse zentriert. Dieser Workshop macht diese dominante Zentrierung erfahrbar und eröffnet zugleich Wege, andere Modalitäten – Bewegung, Stimme, Raum, Resonanz – bewusst einzubeziehen.
Teilnehmende erleben interaktive Übungen, in denen die Figur-Grund-Dynamik, Kontinuität und Nähe im therapeutischen Feld unmittelbar spürbar werden. Zunächst wird die Wahrnehmung auf visuelle und kognitive Aspekte gelenkt, um die Ausgangsorientierung sichtbar zu machen. Anschließend erweitern Übungen im Raum, mit Stimme und Bewegung die Perspektive, sodass die Dynamik des Feldes multisensorisch erfahrbar wird.
Theoretische Impulse aus der phänomenologischen Reflexion und der indischen Philosophie dienen als kurze Reflexionsanker. Sie verdeutlichen, wie andere Zentrierungen genutzt werden können, ohne die Realität des Feldes zu verlieren.
Ziel ist es, die eigene Wahrnehmung zu sensibilisieren, die Wirkung der Sehen/Kognition-Zentrierung zu erkennen und andere Modalitäten für therapeutische Begegnungen nutzbar zu machen. Durch die unmittelbare Erfahrung werden theoretische Konzepte der gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie praxisnah reflektierbar, wodurch die Weiterentwicklung der Wahrnehmung im Feld sichtbar wird.
Sebastian Klotz, Paola Tenchini, Serena Cattaruzza, Walter Coppola, Julia Kursell, Riccardo Martinelli, Savina Raynaud
Taking into account the places and infrastructures that shaped Carl Stumpf’s philosophical thinking, this paper examines how he maintained a balance between his epistemological programme and the experimental and material procedures that he considered from a phenomenological perspective. In pursuing a general theory of judgement and a comprehensive theory of knowledge integrating both the logical and perceptual dimensions of knowledge, he incorporated a wide range of phenomena into his work: sounds produced by musical instruments, speech and musical sounds transmitted through phonographs and telephones, and specially constructed large-scale experimental apparatuses—such as the interference system used to investigate vowel production and perception. He also conducted interactive interview and recording sessions on tonal consciousness with non-European musicians, using tonometers, indigenous and Western musical instruments, and phonographs. The variety of discourse networks—in Friedrich Kittler’s sense of “discourse networks”—and the associated practices of observation and research on which Stumpf drew is remarkable.
The paper argues that this orientation reflects the growing importance of experimental training among scientists in late nineteenth-century physiology and psychology and decisively shaped Stumpf’s philosophical position. It contributed substantially to the modernity of his production of knowledge. This was characterised by rigorous philosophical reflection—logic, metaphysics, eidology, phenomenology, and philosophy of science—combined with a programmatic openness towards all sites at which phenomena were produced, as exemplified by the establishment of research infrastructures such as the Berlin Phonogram Archive. This dual orientation enabled Stumpf to engage with phenomena such as Gestalts and complex impressions in a reflective and empirically grounded manner and to investigate them philosophically. This aspect deserves more attention than it has received to date.
In the concise preface to Sprachlaute (1926)—a work celebrating its centenary this year—Carl Stumpf highlights the central points of this comprehensive investigation, which had already begun in 1913. As Karl Bühler (1927) observed, Stumpf was inspired by the teaching of his first teacher, Brentano, according to whom sensory phenomena constitute merely the “outer layer” of mental life. Yet Stumpf devoted a large part of his research, especially his experimental work, precisely to the study of such phenomena—which may recall Simone Weil’s emphasis on the “roughness” of reality. His Tonpsychologie (1883/90) is a masterful testimony to this endeavour and an indispensable foundation of the psychology of sound and music. No less significant, however, is his work Sprachlaute, subtitled Experimental-Phonetic Investigations, which builds on the earlier work while opening up wider fields of research.
During the terrible years of the First World War, amid the surreal silence of his Berlin laboratory, Stumpf developed and refined countless observations in acoustics; he even succeeded in analysing the components of whispered sounds. In doing so, he advanced phonetic research in the tradition of Helmholtz, while drawing particular inspiration from Wolfgang Köhler’s studies of vowels. The theoretical core of the work is concerned not with the many possible technical applications—from medicine to engineering—but rather with the emergence of so-called “complex qualities”, whose most striking examples are timbres and vowels. On this basis, one may posit a desirable connection between language research and the theory of singing, although—as Stumpf notes—the interest of language theorists in such an unusual investigation cannot be taken for granted. In his Sprachtheorie (1934), Bühler regarded Sprachlaute as the mature masterpiece of the Berlin scholar, who reached the summit of phonetics but did not take the further step towards phonology proper. This contribution addresses these and other related aspects.
This contribution examines how Carl Stumpf incorporates musical composition into his thinking. Its starting point is an observation on melodic motion described in the second volume of his Tonpsychologie (1890). Under the heading “Qualitative Judgements on Composite Sounds”, Stumpf describes the impression that the sound image of various compositions by Beethoven and Schubert is perceived as moving, even though the individual parts in the score do not move. From this point of departure, I pursue three questions: (1) How does Stumpf discuss composite sounds in motion? (2) How does he integrate references to compositions elsewhere in his publications? And (3) how does he draw on his experience as an accomplished violinist? In this way, I hope to clarify, first, how his concept of composite sound relates to that of sonic motion; second, how his earlier observations on composite sounds in music relate to his later concept of complex qualities; and third, how Stumpf generates evidence. My thesis is that the references to Beethoven and Schubert in Tonpsychologie II form part of a development towards producing—rather than merely collecting—evidence.
Carl Stumpf’s intellectual profile has long been overshadowed by his association with Franz Brentano. A closer examination, however, reveals a thinker who drew on a wide range of influences—including Lotze, Ernst Heinrich Weber, and Gustav Theodor Fechner—and combined them into an independent and original philosophy. Among these influences, his relationship to Fechner has received the least attention in the scholarly literature. Stumpf acknowledged Fechner’s decisive role in renewing philosophy through empirical science, and his Tonpsychologie combines methodological elements derived from both Brentano and Fechner. At the same time, Stumpf rejected Fechner’s two-aspect theory of mind and body and criticised its metaphysical ambiguity. Crucially, both thinkers engaged intensively with Spinoza and arrived at related yet distinct interpretations: while Fechner modified Spinozist parallelism by allowing causal interaction between the two series, Stumpf reinterpreted Spinoza from the standpoint of intentionality and viewed the relation between mind and object as an alternative to parallelism. Despite their differences, Fechner and Stumpf thus agree in moving beyond psychophysical parallelism.
The topic of the present call and the venue in Berlin offered an opportunity to read Wilhelm von Humboldt, a renowned Berliner and founder of the host university, in order to highlight some of his fundamental contributions to the study of a living human capacity: language. This capacity shapes our linguistic creativity—particularly our onomatological and lexical creativity—and our interlinguistic competence in such diverse ways that it may be understood as “Gestalt-like”.
An initial contribution is due to the philosopher of language Anton Marty, a pupil of Franz Brentano, the author of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874).
We also recall Marty’s deep friendship and professional partnership with Carl Stumpf, especially in Prague in the early 1880s, a particularly fruitful and rewarding period for both: Marty as the author of Subjectless Sentences and Stumpf as the author of the first volume of Tonpsychologie (Fisette, 2018).
An empirical perspective marks an important shift in Marty’s work from his original intellectual approach towards one that is more sensory and experiential: from abstraction—the subject of his first unpublished essay of 1867—to imagination, and from conceptual selection to the comparison of sensory features, opening up diverse and stimulating paths towards linguistic symbolisation. [For example, compare the English word “different” with the German “verschieden”: two entirely different meanings for what “carries elsewhere” (Latin dis + fero) and what is “separated” (German ver + scheiden): destination versus origin.]
Following his initial Aristotelian formation, Marty worked in a multilingual environment, namely Prague, where Czech, a Slavic language, displaced the “imperial” German of the Habsburg monarchy—not to mention the metalinguistic engagement with the classical languages learned at school in Switzerland, Latin and Greek, and Swiss multilingualism itself. The theme of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s principal work, On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species (1836), points to different worldviews that foreground various simultaneously occurring features of the same object, event, relation, and so forth, as well as intersubjective communicative exchange.
If this feature—especially Marty’s figurative inner form of language—shapes the signifiers within every historical natural language, another approach contributes to modelling different epistemic paths to the same meaning.
To provide empirical support for the historiographical reconstruction of the theory, numerous structured language datasets, or corpora, will be referenced and presented.
Chairs: Herbert Fitzek / Marianne Soff
This panel focuses on the “Berlin School of Gestalt Theory” and its heyday at the Psychological Institute of Friedrich Wilhelm University between 1922 and 1935—from its rooms in the palace, the atmosphere and forms of collaboration at the time, to scientific developments and practice-oriented advances extending into the present day.
(approximately 20–30 minutes each)
This lecture analyses the collaboration between Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Max Wertheimer as a constellation in the early history of Gestalt psychology that has so far received little attention. At its centre is their jointly published 1920 essay “On the Perception of Sound Direction”, which is usually read primarily as a contribution to early psychoacoustics or to military sound localisation during the First World War. By contrast, the lecture argues that the investigations of binaural hearing can be understood as a paradigmatic example of a genuinely Gestalt-psychological research logic. Starting from the scientific milieu of Carl Stumpf and the shared interests of Hornbostel and Wertheimer in music psychology—particularly Wertheimer’s studies of the music of the Vedda in Ceylon—it will be shown that central problems of later Gestalt theory had already been prepared within the context of tone psychology. The question of the unity of melody leads here to a more general investigation of relationally organised perception. Against this background, research on directional hearing appears not as a merely technical application of psychological findings, but as an experimental analysis of the conditions under which coherent spatial perceptual units arise from minimal temporal differences between the two ears. Particular attention is given to the so-called “time theory”, experimentally produced boundary phenomena, and the concept of “effective base length”, which points to the irreducibility of auditory perception to anatomical and physical conditions. Finally, the proximity of these investigations to Wertheimer’s analyses of the phi phenomenon will be highlighted in order to reveal the importance of the auditory field for a general theory of temporally organised Gestalt formation.
To this day, the central achievements of Gestalt psychology are traditionally located in the fields of perception and thought psychology and in the philosophy of science, as developed, among others, in the work of Alexius Meinong and Christian Ehrenfels in Graz and Vienna, and of Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler in Frankfurt and Berlin. Moving beyond the philosophical lecture room and the laboratory of perceptual psychology, this contribution turns to the lesser-known field of early applied Gestalt-psychological research in Germany and Austria during the First World War and the interwar period. Younger members of the Berlin institute, such as Hans Rupp, Erich von Hornbostel, and Kurt Lewin, built a bridge from the laboratory to practice, developed psychological measurement instruments for the military and industry, and thus created a productive connection between Gestalt psychology and applied psychology or psychotechnics. This development came to an abrupt end with the rise of National Socialism and was not resumed after the Second World War.
This contribution traces a line from the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology to the beginnings of applied psychology in Zurich from the 1920s onwards, and from there addresses the question of its present-day significance. It begins with the observation that there was no direct institutional line of tradition between the two contexts. Whereas Berlin Gestalt psychology around Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka was established primarily as theoretically oriented basic research on perception, thinking, and psychological wholes, applied psychology in Zurich initially developed in the context of psychotechnics, vocational guidance, and aptitude assessment, responding to the practical demands of schools, public administration, and the world of work.
This initial difference, however, does not exclude early intellectual points of contact. The lecture shows that structural affinities can already be identified in the interwar period, for example in the critical stance towards atomistic models of explanation, the emphasis on situational conditions of psychological action, and a relational conception of the human being. To capture these connections, the notion of “elective affinities” is proposed as a heuristic perspective. It does not refer to a history of influence or reception, but to conceptual proximities that connect different disciplinary developments without necessarily linking them causally.
Such early elective affinities become particularly visible where Gestalt-psychological concepts—exemplified by Kurt Lewin’s field theory—were translated into questions of social, work, and organisational psychology, thereby becoming applicable to practical fields. Against the background of the political ruptures of the 1930s and the traditions interrupted by emigration, these indirect processes of continuation acquire additional significance. In Zurich, corresponding developments can be observed especially in the gradual theoretical expansion of applied psychology, for example in the work of Hans Biäsch, who advocated a systematic, theory-guided understanding of applied psychology extending beyond purely psychotechnical practice.
The lecture concludes by asking what remains significant today from Berlin Gestalt psychology for applied psychology in Zurich. It argues that its influence continues less through explicit teaching traditions than through fundamental assumptions. In this sense, Berlin Gestalt psychology continues to function as an effective—though mostly implicit—point of reference in the self-understanding of applied psychology in Zurich.
My teacher Wolfgang Metzger attended the Berlin School of Gestalt Theory, and through him I was able to gain some insight into its spirit.
Therefore, I ask today:
What remains of this spirit? I will attempt an answer through the following questions.
What remains of the charm of the Psychological Institute in Rosenstraße?
What remains of the passion for direct observation?
What remains of the pure and beautiful language?
What remains of the universal education and breadth of reading?
What remains of the scientific modesty?
What remains of the philosophical depth of the Berlin School?
What remains of the “special position” that psychopathology was meant to occupy?
What, then, remains of the good spirit of the Berlin School of Gestalt Theory?
Angelika Böhm (ÖAGP) / Herbert Fitzek (BSP)/ Thomas Fuchs (GTA) / Jüly Incel (BSP) / Julia Rohner (ÖAGP) / Uta Wedam (ÖAGP)/ Pola Zügge (BSP)
Among the concepts rooted in Gestalt psychology, the Berlin School of Gestalt Theory and Psychological Morphology are not only approaches that continue to be discussed and practised scientifically today. Both have also given rise to therapeutic approaches that are taught and applied in psychological counselling and treatment contexts. We are taking up a discussion that began almost 20 years ago in Miesenbach, Lower Austria, and that we would like to continue and keep alive within the framework of the GTA. For this panel, we would like to invite an open discussion with the audience about the conceptual foundations and lived practice of both approaches.
The subsequent discussions may be guided by the following shared points of orientation:
1) Practising phenomenology: jointly tracing sensory experiences; exploring inner spaces; allowing emerging images—on the part of clients and therapists—to arise; describing scenes; working with images; taking up and deepening these images; and pursuing their meaning and scope.
2) Keeping the Gestalt perspective in view: forming clear and meaningful configurations; understanding insight as an opportunity to gain clarity and overview; while at the same time allowing transformations to occur; asking what this implies, where it leads, and where something can be expanded, transformed, or varied; learning to shift perspectives.
3) Developing techniques: what this means for concrete therapeutic work; which structures or guidelines are introduced; how conversations are shaped; what is used as material; how framework conditions are handled; and what is contributed by clients and therapists.
4) Central to all of this: the therapeutic relationship, or the shared work, as the framework for all moments that arise during the course of therapy. What does this mean for shaping the therapeutic process and pursuing therapeutic goals?
These points are not intended to be addressed in a rigid order, but may serve as a broad orientation for the course of the discussion. The contributors see their role as providing examples from therapeutic practice that can be introduced as needed in relation to the individual points.
References:
Beneder, D. (2009). Von Goethes Morphologie zur Psychotherapie. Eine Begegnung mit der Analytischen Intensivbehandlung (AIB). Phänomenal 1/2009, 26–29.
Endres, N. & Salber, W. (2001). Analytische Intensivberatung. Gestalttherapie 15 (2), 59–81.
Stemberger, G. (ed.) (2024), Grundkonzepte der Gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie. Der gestaltpsychologische Ansatz in der Psychotherapie. Vienna: Krammer.
“Come into the Open, Friends!”
The Free Spirit of the Romanisches Café
The 1920s were a period of flourishing in Berlin not only scientifically, but also culturally. Alongside political struggles, the crises of the young Weimar Republic, and bitter poverty, there was—for a few years—a new freedom of spirit following the end of the Wilhelmine era, an irrepressible zest for life, and a passion for entertainment and experimentation. The Romanisches Café became a centre and refuge for artists from the liberal and left-wing cultural scene of Berlin’s “New West”: Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kästner, Mascha Kaléko, Else Lasker-Schüler, Ringelnatz, Bertolt Brecht, Irmgard Keun, Elias Canetti, Otto Dix, Alfred Döblin… The guest list reads like a who’s who of Berlin’s cultural life in the 1920s. And right in the middle of it all was Claire Waldoff, the “Berlin Sparrow”.
In our salon “Come into the Open, Friends!”, marking the conclusion of the GTA conference, we present cheeky chansons by Claire Waldoff alongside texts by legendary visitors to the café.
References:
followed by sparkling wine and socializing
Tuning the Mind: How Music Shapes Inner Mental Experience
Inner mental experiences during music listening, such as mind-wandering and mental imagery, have recently assumed a central role in music psychology. They are widespread among listeners, can enhance musical enjoyment, and may have positive effects on mental health. To date, most research has focused on how musical features, such as perceived or felt emotion and tempo, influence the phenomenology of listeners’ thoughts and imagery. However, several fundamental questions remain insufficiently explored: (i) the music-specific mechanisms through which music enables episodes of mind-wandering, including mental imagery; (ii) the neural correlates of these subjective experiences; and (iii) the potential benefits of such inner cognitions for mental health and creativity. In addition, this body of literature has incorporated only limited neurocognitive research on mind-wandering, resulting in a discrepancy in both theory and methodology.
In this lecture, I will provide an overview of my recent work on these topics, in which I use novel methods including data from listening experiments combined with psychometric network analysis and analyses of brain connectivity. I will highlight evidence showing that music uniquely shapes inner mental experiences and their underlying brain-network dynamics, that the mental space supported by music and sound promotes creative incubation, and that music-evoked imagery has powerful practical applications across a range of fields, including therapy and sport.
Gestalt between Science and Worldview:
The Ehrenfels–Wertheimer Correspondence (1914–1932)
This lecture offers a new reading of the emergence of Gestalt theory based on the previously unpublished correspondence between Christian von Ehrenfels and Max Wertheimer (1914–1932). Its central thesis is that the difference between the two should not be understood as a linear development, but rather as the expression of a fundamental tension between science and worldview, a tension that finds its conceptual locus in the notion of Gestalt itself. The correspondence provides privileged access to the constellations within which this paradigm emerged and, at the same time, sheds light on the academic milieu of early twentieth-century Prague, which was shaped by theoretical conflicts and institutional dynamics. Particularly visible are Wertheimer’s difficulties in establishing himself academically and the ambivalent role played by Ehrenfels. At the centre of the analysis lies the conceptual problem of Gestalt. Whereas Ehrenfels develops the concept of Gestalt within a cosmologically grounded horizon extending towards a comprehensive worldview, Wertheimer defines it as a strictly empirically oriented structural principle aimed at the unity of experience. The correspondence thus reveals not only a theoretical divergence, but also two different ways of determining the relationship between science and philosophy. The emergence of Gestalt theory consequently appears as the result of an epistemological tension whose significance extends into contemporary debates.
A Programme Between Two Worlds: Carl Stumpf and Berlin Gestalt Psychology
This contribution aims to highlight the distinctive features of Stumpf’s approach and its significance during his work in Berlin, culminating in his appointment as director of the “Institute of Experimental Psychology”. His approach was characterised by an emphasis on the fruitful interplay between philosophical reflection and empirical research. This was precisely the approach adopted by the representatives of Gestalt psychology, who further developed it during the years of the Weimar Republic. With regard to its reception within philosophy, however, this programme encountered considerable resistance. In the context of the Weimar Republic, the ideal of a “pure” philosophy increasingly gained ground—understood as a strictly philosophical theory of knowledge and as transcendental phenomenology, largely free from any substantial engagement with the empirical sciences. The contribution seeks to emphasise both the fruitfulness and the continuing relevance of this approach, as developed by the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology in accordance with Stumpf’s model. Alongside this continuity, it will also draw attention to differences between Carl Stumpf and the Berlin Gestalt psychologists, with particular regard to questions of perception and the concept of sensation.
Carl Stumpf as an Epistemologist of Probability
Stumpf’s two essays on probability, published in 1892, are masterpieces of the philosophy of science, written by a major psychologist and philosopher. Johannes von Kries’s pioneering work on probability had just appeared. Stumpf develops a position situated between the perspectives of von Kries and Laplace and proposes an original view in which psychological aspects play an important role. His approach was later criticised by the frequentist Reichenbach, but it remains one of the most interesting positions in the philosophy of science to this day. Fedde Benediktus has defined it as a form of objective Bayesianism. This proposal is examined here.
Musical Groups as Social Gestalts
Collective music-making in groups is a powerful medium for non-verbal communication, social bonding, and cultural transmission. To fulfil these functions, participants generally strive to create coherent polyphonic sound structures in which individual instrumental or vocal parts interlock and jointly form audible Gestalts.
My research investigates how this process is enabled by so-called “ensemble skills”. These skills allow individuals to predict the sounds of others through anticipatory auditory imagery, to adapt continuously to variations in timing and intensity through automatic synchronisation and deliberate coordination, and at the same time to perceive their own actions and those of others in real time.
I will provide an overview of research examining these ensemble skills and show (1) how they can be investigated behaviourally using controlled laboratory paradigms and naturalistic musical tasks, (2) how their complex interplay can be captured through computational modelling, and (3) how neuroscientific methods can provide insights into the underlying brain processes.
Overall, this research shows how ensemble skills link basic sensorimotor processes with higher-order social-cognitive factors, such as personality, and enable interacting individuals to regulate the balance between psychological representations of “self” and “other”. Audible Gestalts in joint music-making can therefore be understood as expressions of social relationships. The concept of ensemble skills provides a mechanistic approach to these social Gestalts and makes it possible to analyse complex patterns of collective behaviour along a spectrum ranging from measurable sensorimotor processes to social processes.
Gestalt in Modern Music Research
In modern music research, Gestalts can be understood either as emergent outcomes of the interaction between individuals and their environment or as principles that guide our understanding of these interactions. In both cases, Gestalt refers to holistic phenomena whose properties cannot be reduced to their constituent parts. In this lecture, we relate such phenomena to action–perception coupling, prediction, and adaptation. Formal models are introduced as concrete theories for interpreting empirical data. In this way, holistic approaches become more tangible, dynamic, and empirically testable.
We first demonstrate this approach using a causal model of music preferences based on data from a large group of listeners. The model describes how listeners perceive musical features and connect them with embodiment, experience, and appreciation. Rather than considering these factors in isolation, the model shows how appreciation emerges from their interaction.
We then discuss dynamical-systems models based on nonlinear differential equations. These models describe how actions and perceptions continuously adapt to one another over time. A typical example is synchronisation: musicians unconsciously adjust their actions to perceived rhythms. In musical ensembles, this mutual adaptation promotes co-regulation and the emergence of a stable tempo. From a Gestalt-psychological perspective, the resulting performance cannot be understood merely as the sum of individual contributions. Rather, it emerges from the dynamics of the interacting system and illustrates how musical organisation arises through the relationships between musicians and their environment.
in alphabetical order
Since the foundation of the National Folk Ensemble for traditional dance, music and dance in Sofia, Bulgaria back in 1951, composers and choreographers around the country have worked hand in hand. Their purpose was to offer an augmented version of rural folklore through rearranged rural music and re-choreographed rural dance using some classical esthetics codes. Sometimes adding plot, a theme, or even staging pagan customs, artistic directors may have created a closer choreomusical relationship that the audience would easily enjoy watching. Thanks to a recent paradigm for studying relationship between music and dance, or even sound and movement, we intend to study excerpts from Bulgarian staged folklore repertoire in order to see how dance and music are intertwining. To help, we are implementing some of the results of many studies in psychology of music and dance, in the sense of what people can feel while listening so certain features of these two arts. Thanks to that, we postulate that a “close” or “narrow” relationship between music and dance is key in engaging the audience into a higher qualitative affective response. Analyzing harmony, dynamics, tempo, rhythm, stage composition, among other factors, we aim to offer a whole artistic study of this kind of staged art in order to give elements of reflexion on how choreographers and composers could better cooperate to offer an even more emotionally moving experience to the audience.
For the infants of paleolithic hunter-gatherers, survival depended on relationships with multiple caregivers (alloparenting). Those relationships potentially influenced all later relationships and behaviors.
The third-trimester human fetus perceives in all senses. Like most animals, it attempts to construct (imagine) its external world from incomplete multimodal inputs, focusing on affordances. The sound of maternal voice and heartbeat depends strongly on her emotional/physical state, which is crucial for infant survival. The same applies to maternal footsteps, synchronized with whole-body fetal movements.
Can that explain the origin of music, defined as song and dance, melody and rhythm? Such a theory is consistent with embodiment, entrainment, and groove. But what about harmony? For centuries, (Western) musicians have passionately explored tonalities, genres, and traditions. But most (Western) music is still based on major and minor triads and scales. Theories of consonance, resolution, tonality, prolongation, stability, function, and emotion can account for structural and functional properties of harmonic tonality, but not its extraordinary resilience.
The fetal inner ear starts to analyze incoming signals. Some five partials of the maternal voice may become audible despite low-pass filtering (e.g., 200 to 1000 Hz). Virtual pitches may be less salient than spectral pitches if harmonic pitch patterns are still being learned. Voiced speech sounds may therefore sound like major triads (3:4:5 or 4:5:6), but only approximately, spectral pitches still being relatively uncertain. Later in life, the sound of prenatal maternal voice in implicit memory is similar to major and minor triads – consistent with their Gestaltqualität (Übersummativität) and spiritual associations.
Ausgehend von einem Schlüsselerlebnis 1974 beim Hören gregorianischer Gesänge entwickelte York Höller sein Konzept der Komposition mittels Klang- und Zeitgestalten. Dieses basiert auf melodischen Keimzellen, deren Proportionen sich analog auf sämtliche musikalische Parameter und auch die Großform übertragen lassen. Höller gestaltet musikalische Strukturen als lebendige, sich organisch entwickelnde Formen und zielt damit auf funktionale Beziehungen von Teil und Ganzem, die eng an gestalttheoretisches Denken anknüpfen.
Das Gestaltdenken Höllers zeigt Parallelen zu Heinrich Schenkers von Goethes Morphologie beeinflusster Schichtenlehre, den Reihentechniken der 2. Wiener Schule oder Stockhausens Formelkomposition. Neben vielen weiteren Einflüssen, von Genforschung bis hin zu Informations- und Kommunikationstheorie, waren Ansätze von Fritjof Capra und Gregory Bateson besonders prägend. Während Batesons Überlegungen die wahrnehmungspsychologische Perspektive auf Gestalten schärften, übernahm Höller von Capra zentrale Begriffe wie Ganzheitlichkeit, Organizität oder lebendes System.
Von Mitte der 1970er-Jahre bis zum Ende der 1980er-Jahre stand die Verbindung von Gestaltkomposition mit elektronisch erweiterten Klangspektren im Zentrum von Höllers Schaffen. Beispielanalysen von Klanggitter (1976/77; rev. 1984), Arcus (1978) und Umbra (1979/80; rev. 1983) verdeutlichen, dass Elektronik hier nicht nur als Moment der Materialerweiterung, sondern als integrales Mittel zur Umsetzung von Gestaltprinzipien wie Prägnanz und Kontinuität produktiv wird. Gleichzeitig zeigt sich, dass Höllers Komponieren mit Klanggestalten weniger auf abstrakte serielle Konstruktion abzielt, als vielmehr auf die Ausarbeitung von Materialeigenschaften, die sich an wahrnehmungspsychologischen Gesetzmäßigkeiten orientieren.
Die „genetischen Codes“ der Klangstrukturen, die sich sowohl deduktiv als Großformen als auch induktiv als Struktur entfalten, bringen so eine organische Syntax hervor, in der Melodik, Harmonik, Rhythmik und Form verschmelzen. Dieser Ansatz eröffnet neue Wahrnehmungsräume, gerade in Bezug auf die intermediale Fusion von akustischen und elektronischen Klängen.
Wertheimer (1923) defined the concept of Prägnanz (well-formedness) by referring to melody perception “in a musical way”. Chopin laid emphasis on highlighting melodic lines in his piano works, according to historical sources. Bringing together these concepts, a study was conducted on how listeners with different musical backgrounds perceived historically informed interpretations of Chopin compositions, and if there was an effect on perception and memorisation of musical Gestalt structures. Excerpts from four piano works were played in a way that highlighted singing (i.e., cantilena) qualities and included more rubato; these were compared to performances of the same music with more emphasis on conventional virtuosity. In a recognition task, participants selected one out of three melodic motives that matched the original piece best. Using a between-groups design, the historically informed cantilena style resulted in higher judgments of the Gestalt dimension Prägnanz, and predicted recognition accuracy for one out of the four excerpts in a binominal logistic regression. In addition, the interaction between interpretation style and participants’ own experiences of playing Chopin on the piano contributed to the model. While virtuosity of both interpretive styles was rated equally highly across all excerpts, familiarity with the music had an impact on the perception of Prägnanz. Depending on the composition and on participants’ experience, historically informed interpretation styles may thus influence memory for musical actions and the perception of Gestalt qualities.
in alphabetical order
We will present the results of a study investigating the perceptual structure of eighteen perceptual dimensions of opposites (e.g. full–empty, hard–soft, light–heavy, long–short, smooth–rough) across the visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory sensory modalities. These structures were defined by three components: two poles (e.g. full and empty) and an intermediate region (e.g. neither full nor empty). The main objective of the study was to determine the extent to which the perceptual structure of opposites is invariant across sensory modalities and, if not, how the structures differ.
Participants took part to the study in small inter-observation groups. First, they were asked to provide examples of contexts in which they could experience each dimension, to confirm whether or not the dimension applied to the five sensory modalities. Participants could refer not only to the objects or experiences in front of them, but also to experiences they had previously encountered and which were familiar to the other group members. Participants then had to describe whether the poles and the intermediates were experienced as a single property (point) or a range of properties – in the case of intermediates they also had the option “no intermediates”.
The results showed that the overall structure of the dimensions was stable in at least two sensory modalities, with many structures remaining stable across more than two modalities. There was particular stability across the visual and tactile modalities, as well as the gustatory and olfactory modalities.
Humans and other animals possess an intuitive sense of number allowing them to rapidly and effortlessly estimate the number of items in a set. Such approximate estimates of numerosity are crucial in a variety of situations, from survival in the wild to more mundane tasks like choosing the queue with fewer people at the supermarket counter. Numerosity is a particularly interesting dimension as it is an emergent global feature of a set, showing properties that are not shared by its constituent elements – effectively making it a “structured whole” different from the sum of its parts. Numerosity perception has been indeed shown to be systematically defined by the organizational principles pioneered by the Gestalt School of Psychology, showing a striking dissociation between the whole and the sum of its parts. Specifically, numerosity perception can be modulated by organizational principles involving the local relationships across different items, like connectedness and proximity, as well as more holistic properties like symmetry and coherence. This modulation occurs in a quantitative and easily measurable fashion, altering the perceived numerosity of a set. Although many studies applied the Gestalt principles to numerosity perception, a review of the different findings is still missing. Here we thus aim at drawing a coherent picture of the literature to better understand how the brain generates our sense of number. Overall, the Gestalt organizational principles have proven to be an invaluable tool for our understanding of numerosity perception, showing the fundamental role that the Gestalt School still plays in contemporary vision science.
The discovery and development of perspective established, for the first time in the history of art, a close relationship between phenomenal perception and the representation of three-dimensionality on a plane. From 1927, the year of the publication of Erwin Panofsky’s text Die Perspektive als “symbolische Form“, the study of perspective in art raised profound epistemological implications, going far beyond perspective itself to address the broader question of the cognitive value of any type of illusory representation of reality. In this context, in the 1960s, Rudolf Arnheim and Ernst H. Gombrich outlined two opposing positions of absolute importance from a psychological point of view: the first was deeply rooted in the theory of form of Gestaltpsychologie, the second anticipated the Cognitive Psychology of Ulrich Neisser.
Ecological psychology of James J. Gibson, in developing the concept of affordance, drew its conceptualization from Gestalt psychology while, at the same time, diverging from it, for example by denying the dynamic dimension intrinsic to Gestalt theory. According to Gibson, in fact, affordance does not imply a field dynamic between the external object and the self, does not require a subjective need as presupposed in the notion of Aufforderungscharakter formulated by Kurt Lewin, but is instead centered on the possibilities for action offered by the environment to the perceiving organism.
However, the theoretical contribution of Gestalt psychologists, with regard to relational
aspects with objects in the external field, went well beyond Lewin’s fundamental formulation of Aufforderungscharakter. Gestalt psychologists in fact acknowledged different modes of relation with objects.
The present paper clarifies this contribution by distinguishing these modes as conceptual tools in specifying use-relations with artifacts and tools: tertiary-expressive qualities, invitation qualities, actions directly elicited by the object, and actions due to a sedimentation of usage knowledge. This clarification ultimately suggests that Gestalt psychology theorization has included self-environment relational modes far more articulated than Gibson was able to recognize.
Arnheim took many courses with Kurt Lewin in Berlin and was even the first to do experiments with what became the “Zeigarnik” effect. If one looks at Arnheim’s early psychology of art, it has ambitions to be a complete science – encompassing motivation and cognition. By thinking about not just the work of art, but its embedding within the “life space,” we can broaden Arnheim’s psychology of art to be truly applicable to broad swaths of world art. By building in spatial (environment) and motivational (directedness to an object) elements, Arnheim’s theory achieves its original Berlin scope with Kurt Lewin.
in alphabetical order
How do listeners transform sound into meaningful form? This presentation highlights the relationship between musical perception, mental imagery, and action through a cross-cultural free-drawing paradigm, based on over a decade of cross-cultural fieldwork research. Musicians from culturally distinct groups (United Kingdom, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Greece, and a remote community in northwest Pakistan) were asked to produce visual representations of simple melodic stimuli varying in pitch contour and attack rate. Participants were instructed to create marks that would allow a member of their own community to recognise the sound.
Across groups, all participants generated consistent visual representations, suggesting a shared capacity to organise auditory input into coherent perceptual forms and translate these across modalities. However, the organisation of these forms differed markedly. Participants familiar with notational or literate systems predominantly produced symbolic, spatially organised depictions of time and pitch, typically along orthogonal axes. In contrast, non-literate participants tended to produce more iconic representations that did not prioritise linear temporal structure, instead highlighting qualitative or timbral aspects of the sound.
At the same time, spatial organisation cannot be reduced to literacy alone. Even in the absence of shared writing conventions, participants frequently adopted comparable directional layouts when representing temporal structure, suggesting that perceptual Gestalts emerge from an interaction between cultural practices, representational systems, and the affordances of action. The findings show how musicalexperience is imaginatively transformed and enacted through culturally mediated processes of visual representation.
This study examines how background music influences emotional expression in children during a structured art activity. Children often find it difficult to express emotions verbally, making creative activities like painting a useful medium for emotional communication. The study is based on a Gestalt perspective, which views experience as a unified whole rather than separate elements. In this context, listening to music, imagining internal experiences, and expressing emotions through painting are understood as interconnected processes. The research follows an experimental design with two groups: one group completes a ‘paint your emotion’ task with background music, while the other performs the same task in silence. Participants include children aged 8 to 12 years. Emotional expression is assessed through analysis of artwork, self-reported emotional states, and behavioral engagement during the task. It is expected that background music will enhance emotional depth, increase variety in color use, and improve engagement levels. The study also explores how music may evoke mental imagery that influences visual expression. Findings from this research may contribute to the integration of music and art-based approaches in child psychology, education, and therapeutic practices. Overall, the study aims to understand how perception, imagination, and action work together in shaping children’s emotional expression.
Keywords: music therapy, emotional expression, children, Gestalt psychology, imagery, art-based intervention
Music is rarely a solitary experience, yet psychological research on music-evoked imagery and emotion has largely focused on the individual listener. This study asks a simple but underexplored question: does listening together change what we imagine and feel?
Grounded in Gestalt theory’s understanding of experience as an integrated whole, and drawing on the BRECVEM model of music-evoked emotion and contemporary mental imagery research, this study examines how social listening context shapes the vividness, coherence, and emotional quality of music-evoked mental imagery. A within-subject design is used with 25–30 young adults (aged 18–25), each participating in both an individual listening condition (headphones, quiet setting) and a collective listening condition (shared group setting), using matched music stimuli.
Imagery vividness is assessed via a context-adapted version of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), emotional response via the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS), and pre-post mood via the PANAS-SF. The Tellegen Absorption Scale controls for individual differences in experiential absorption.
We hypothesise that collective listening will produce greater emotional resonance and more coherent imagery reflecting a shared experiential field, while individual listening will support more vivid, personally elaborated imagery. These are understood as two distinct modes of Gestalt formation — one shaped by co-presence and convergent meaning-making, the other by immersion in idiosyncratic imagery.
By situating music listening within its social context, this study speaks directly to the conference’s interest in the mediations between Gestalt, imagery, and action — and to the question of how the conditions under which we listen shape the inner worlds that music builds.
Key words: Mental imagery, imagery vividness, music-evoked emotion, collective listening, Gestalt theory, experiential absorption, emotional resonance, social context
Helga De la Motte-Haber (2026) referred Ganzfeld experiments to Wolfgang Metzgers work in the 1930s. Participants in his set up after a while developed hallucinations because of sensory deprivation. The concept was revived in 1968 by James Turrell and others for an Art and Technology Program project at the UCLA and later at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Salter 2015). Salters derives the general question: “What happens to the `sensing self´ and its embodiment in audio-visual environments that overload or reduce our perception?”
Research has demonstrated that musical soundtracks can influence the emotional impact, interpretation, and remembering of visual information as well as a reverse relationship meaning that visual information influences the perception and memory of music (Boltzt et al. 2009). Previous research has also indicated that, compared to audio-only presentation, audio-visual congruent presentation can lead to a more intense emotional response. The results suggest that the effect of audio-visual integration is stronger when the music is positive, (Pan & Zhang, 2019).
Randomness is an emotionally neutral stimulus and therefore a proper candidate for research on the perceptional impact of the visual stimuli on music/ sound or vice versa.
Handel (2006) described the conceptual similarities and differences between auditory and visual perception. For both, all sensations are understood to belong to objects and are understood with respect to the properties of objects. However, there is always inherent uncertainty about the multiple stimulus properties. To maximize performance, all sensory systems encode energy at multiple resolutions to make use of several spatial and temporal scales simultaneously.
Another fundamental problem for the auditory and visual systems is that the range of external energy is far greater than the firing range of individual neurons. Weber`s law demonstrates the invariance of discrimination across the energy levels. And the perceptual system must overcome the external and internal noise that disrupts perception as perceptual efficiency refer to the ability to identify objects in the presence of such noise. Auditory excitations that start at the same time (onset synchrony) are assumed to come from one source is mostly relevant for the organization of auditory excitation.
As the excitations from different sources are intermixed the excitations can be organized in several ways to yield different precepts. The Gestalt psychologists proposed laws of organization due to cortical field forces that acted to knit the visual excitations into continuous enclosed objects. The resulting objects (percepts) were described as the “simplest” possible and, although never clearly defined formed along category Prägnanz.
Generally one can say that the input of noise changes the signal-to-noise ratio of the perceptual process. Besides internal noise due to uncertainty the randomisation of acoustic and visual stimuli amplifies the mentioned noisy component of perception so that it can be examined whether and how the process of Gestaltbildung is influenced.
in alphabetical order
This paper introduces the “experience-score” that I am developing as an artistic research method for tracing the processual formation of experiential structures in musical improvisation. Conceived as a non-verbal, post-performative transcription, the method draws on meditation and micro-phenomenological techniques to reconstruct the ephemeral, multi-layered experience of performing (improvisation), making accessible otherwise elusive strata of embodied, cognitive, and affective processes.
In contrast to atomistic models of perception, the study mobilizes Gestalt theory to
conceptualize improvisation as the dynamic organization of relational wholes. Principles such as proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, and Prägnanz are approached as operative forces within the musician‘s lived experiential field. During heightened states of flow, this field may dissolve stable subject–object relations, giving rise to intensely structured yet fragmented, multisensory constellations of imagery and sensation.
Building on Rudolf Arnheim’s concept of perceptual fields structured by tension, balance, and directional forces, the paper shifts focus to the performer’s interaction with emerging musical material. Musical meaning arises relationally through fragmentary, historically coded signifiers whose interconnections generate coherent yet non-explicit expressive structures.
Findings from my previous studies on collaborative improvisation further suggest that such experiential Gestalten are not only internally constituted but can extend into shared, relational fields of empathy and collective flow. By translating embodied and imagined experience into visual form, the experience-score creates a temporal cartography of performance, bridging individual and collective dimensions of musical experience.
Electronic Dance Music (EDM) systematically influences dancers’ action tendencies through the modulation of timbre, amplitude, and rhythmic density. Tension and kineasthetic imagery are affected through “break routines”, consisting of breakdown (low-pass filtering to attenuate the primary pulse), build-up (progressive increases in energy, timbral brightness, and rhythmic density), and drop (the bassline and main beat is re-introduced, often with additional energy). The break routine operates as a continuous mechanism of tension and resolution, where dancers during the buildup are maintained in suspense for the anticipated release (the drop). For instance, the reduced pulse clarity at the breakdown, acoustically like being under a blanket, can be referred to by dancers as being “constricted”. As the buildup progresses, so does the tension and, eventually, the drop serves as a powerful resolution, with a clear action and pleasurable responses, reported in laboratory settings as well.
Notably, EDM production techniques achieve this effect through dynamic modulation of timbre, amplitude, and rhythmic density, whereas most models of tonal tension are based on discrete pitch relationships. We here present a model of musical tension in EDM departing from Gestalt grouping principles. Based on extracted acoustic parameters, the model formalizes violations of grouping principles of pitch proximity, timbral similarity, and temporal proximity, delineating a perceptual model of tension. The model was validated against continuous ratings of perceived tension and compared with motion data from published studies.
Music often captures attention, evokes emotions, invites bodily movement and makes us feel connected with other people. Yet these experiential qualities do not always emerge in the same way: the same music may, at one instance, elicit intense emotions, and at another, primarily engage movement or social connectedness. On psychological level, such experiences frequently associated with altered attention states (AAS) such as absorption, immersion and flow. However, in the literature, these terms are often used inconsistently and interchangeably, creating conceptual ambiguity and methodological challenges. For instance, absorption have been described both as a trait and a state, whereas flow is more consistently associated with action and a balance between skill and challenge.
As a result, it remains unclear (1) what these states consist of, (2) how they have been described and operationalised in musical contexts, and (3) how they relate to the affective, bodily, and social dimensions of musical experience.
This paper presents a critical integrative literature review on AAS during musical engagement. It examines how such states have been conceptualised, which characteristics have been used to define them, and how they have been operationalised across previous studies. Particular attention is given to the roles of context, affective, psychological, behavioural, and social details. We propose that these states may be better understood by using Gestalt theory as an integrative framework, helping to identify recurring patterns across AAS, including interactions between environmental context and psycho-behavioural experiences, and to clarify why the same music can engage listeners in different affective, bodily, and social ways.
Early contributions to Gestalt theory developed in close relation to research on music and melody perception (Carl Stumpf; Christian von Ehrenfels) and thus inherently engaged with temporal aspects of perceptual organization. Nevertheless, the temporal properties of Gestalt formation have since received comparatively little attention. While Gestalt theory has exerted a significant influence on the visual arts (Rudolf Arnheim) and on theories of science (Ludwik Fleck), its relevance for temporally structured phenomena and for music research remains underexplored.
In line with central Gestalt-theoretical positions, more recent enactivist approaches in cognitive science emphasize that perception is fundamentally action-oriented (Shaun Gallagher). Making sense in the world requires active engagement with the environment and interactions with objects and people. However, the field of possible Aufforderungscharaktere (Kurt Lewin) that individuals actualize varies according to time-related factors such as experiences, knowledge, skills, and constraints.
Such dispositions are not only co-constituted by past experiences but also by anticipations of the future, as discussed in predictive processing accounts. The perception of Gestalten is therefore shaped by emerging imaginations and experiential excess that Gaston Bachelard describes as exagération. Gestalten thus emerge due to conditions that extend beyond the “here and now.”
Particularly in live musical performance, both past experience and the anticipated future contribute to the perception of multimodal Gestalt objects. This applies both to microtemporal (e.g. familiarity, structural expectations) and to macrotemporal dimensions (music-evoked autobiographical memories). The talk examines the explanatory potential of these models for Gestalt-oriented analyses in music research.
Recent research on crossmodal correspondences has shown that listeners consistently associate musical sounds with visual, emotional, and semantic features across cultures and developmental stages. Drawing on studies of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals, as well as recent work on multisensory mappings of consonance and dissonance, this presentation examines how musical structure, timbre, and interval relations shape audiovisual and affective associations. I argue that these findings support the existence of robust multisensory organisations linking music perception, conceptual representations, and emotional meaning. At the same time, they raise further questions concerning the origins and mechanisms of musical semantics.
Systematic relationships between auditory properties and musical characteristics on the one hand, and qualities of other sensory domains on the other, may contribute to the formation of extra-musical meaning. Although this is a vibrant field of research within experimental psychology and neuroscience, many fundamental questions remain open. Can sensory interactions be identified in musical works, and if so, how can such practices be situated within their historical or cultural contexts? Could insights into crossmodal relationships foster musical creativity? And finally, would cross-sensory extensions be valued by listeners in physical or digital environments, and what role do congruence and incongruence play in the design of multisensory musical experiences?
Connecting Perception, Feeling, and Thought: A Bayesian Model of Crossmodal Correspondences with Music
Crossmodal correspondences with musical properties—both in isolation and in musical contexts—have been extensively investigated through behavioural experiments. These experiments have revealed robust relationships between properties such as pitch and vertical position, object size and sharpness, tension, brightness, speed, and other features. In addition, various origins of these associations have been identified.
In musical contexts, numerous factors influence the multimodal experiences of listeners or performers. As a result, the correspondences that become salient for a particular context and individual are probabilistic rather than deterministic. This contribution examines the probabilistic nature of crossmodal correspondences with music and uses Bayes’ rule to model such associations.
Bayes’ rule is applied to connect musical properties with corresponding crossmodal associations, taking into account the information content of a property, the probability of the correspondence, and the degree of evidence supporting it. The application of Bayes’ rule and its predictions are evaluated using a range of musical examples. This modelling raises new questions about multimodal musical experiences while also proposing a possible underlying mechanism.
The strength of this approach lies in its capacity to formally investigate the factors influencing multimodal musical experiences. Different models can generate different predictions, for example by emphasising emotions as a source of correspondences or by defining expectations in advance.
Auditory Morphodynamics: A Gestalt-Based Approach to Investigating Audiovisual Associations in Sound Art
Research on crossmodal associations—particularly between auditory and visual domains—has increased considerably in recent years. Such associations are based on numerous factors ranging from early perceptual processes to higher-order cognitive inferences, as well as emotional and environmental influences. The emerging concept of stimulus morphodynamics offers a new framework for investigating crossmodal correspondences by focusing on the evolving properties of a stimulus and on its qualitative and quantitative continuities and discontinuities. Depending on morphodynamic complexity, such associations may arise from different kinds of perceptual similarity, ranging from structural matches to conceptual analogies.
This contribution examines morphodynamics through a Gestalt-based paradigm that links perceptual experience both to the structural properties and to the phenomenal appearance of a stimulus. Morphodynamic patterns can convey complex information emerging from the temporal development of sensory stimuli. Building on the author’s empirical studies, the contribution investigates the ability of auditory stimuli to carry non-auditory information. The results show that participants consistently associate musical and specially prepared sound materials—that is, electronically synthesised abstract sounds—with mental images reflecting specific material properties such as viscosity or elasticity, as well as with visual representations of objects embodying these properties.
At the centre of this study is the assumption that non-referential abstract sounds can evoke representations of the real world solely through their morphodynamic development. This finding demonstrates that sound patterns can convey non-auditory information and reveals a perceptual mechanism that extends beyond referential meaning. Such a perspective opens new avenues for understanding aesthetic perception in sound art and suggests that certain musical genres and sound practices—particularly those that minimise references to physical causality and symbolic meaning—may be experienced as inherently meaningful because of their dynamic form.
The Meta-Schema: Between Gestalt Perception, Crossmodal Correspondences, and Multimodal Semantics
At the intersection of Gestalt perception, cognitive psychology, and linguistics, this contribution proposes a new construct underlying concept formation: the meta-schema.
The common denominator of Gestalt theory, research on crossmodal correspondences, and the study of image schemas in cognitive linguistics lies in their focus on the active construction of experience by the cognitive system. Gestalt perception, for example, motivates organised configurations from scattered patterns of light, such as “a jagged star”. Image schemas preserve such constructs as templates for forming metaphorical meanings, such as “a jagged memory”. Finally, crossmodal correspondences explain both how holistic perception extends from one modality to another—as above, from visual perception to language—and how an established connection naturally motivates further multimodal meanings, such as a “jagged” musical timbre.
The present approach takes a further step towards abstraction by arguing that several image schemas that appear culturally and linguistically distinct—such as VERTICALITY, EXTENSION, and SOURCE–PATH–GOAL—are in fact based on a single system of higher-order principles. Thus, pitches that “go up” in some languages but “shrink”, “move in a circle”, become “smaller”, or become “lighter” in others are all based on an ordered system of primitive concepts: typically, an object that moves or transforms from point A to point B, the force required to set it in motion, the energy needed to sustain the direction of movement, and division into “units” marking the stages of that movement.
In the presentation, I will illustrate how this “meta-schema of pitch development” can be identified through perceptual experiments, historical texts, anthropological findings, and multimodal materials such as opera performances or album covers.
Chairs: Herbert Fitzek / Marianne Soff
This panel focuses on the “Berlin School of Gestalt Theory” and its heyday at the Psychological Institute of Friedrich Wilhelm University between 1922 and 1935—from its rooms in the palace, the atmosphere and forms of collaboration at the time, to scientific developments and practice-oriented advances extending into the present day.
Following the collapse of the German Empire, science also made a fresh start in the Weimar Republic. Gestalt theory found particularly favourable conditions in the rooms of the Psychological Institute of Friedrich Wilhelm University in the former Hohenzollern Palace. We aim to reconstruct how the institute established itself in the palace: How did Köhler, Wertheimer, and Lewin live, work, and conduct research? Which rooms did they occupy? What were their main areas of work? Who collaborated with them? Which doctoral students carried out research there? Who, apart from the representatives of Gestalt theory, belonged to the institute? And what was happening around the palace? How did Gestalt theory fit into the culture of 1920s Berlin?
In this introductory contribution to the panel, we provide an overview of the research and working conditions of those involved in Gestalt theory in 1920s Berlin, offering a concrete virtual glimpse into their place of work in the former Hohenzollern Palace.
Lewin was one of the central figures at the Berlin Institute of Gestalt Psychology. In 1928, he delivered a lecture entitled “The Development of Experimental Psychology of Will and Psychotherapy” at the Third General Medical Congress for Psychotherapy in Baden-Baden. In his lecture, Lewin demonstrated to the medical audience that experimentally oriented research conducted under real-life conditions could also provide a meaningful way of examining psychodynamic relationships. Almost 100 years later, the findings from research on action and affect psychology—also known as the “Berlin Experiments”—remain highly relevant.
Gestalt-Theoretical Psychotherapy (GTP), which places itself in the tradition of Gestalt psychology, has taken up key findings from this systematically structured experimental programme and transferred them to the field of psychotherapy. The following topics, each of major importance in psychotherapy, will be discussed by way of example:
Chair: Mats Küssner (Gustav Mahler Privatuniversität für Musik)
Music and mental imagery spans a wide range of phenomena, from spontaneous narratives and memories to embodied imagery and therapeutic applications. This panel brings together empirical, theoretical, and clinical perspectives on how music shapes images, movements, stories, and symbolic experience. In doing so, it also raises a distinctly Gestalt-oriented question: how musical experience organizes diverse elements of imagination into meaningful and coherent wholes.
Laboratory and online studies have shown that music influences mental imagery and guides imaginative experience. Natural language processing (NLP) methods have proved useful for investigating the content of such imagery. These studies have shown that listeners within a shared cultural context tend to converge on common ideas when interpreting musical excerpts narratively (Margulis et al., 2022). However, NLP approaches have not yet been applied to imagery elicited by live music—that is, in situations where audience demographics vary more widely and the musical stimuli are considerably longer than the 30–90-second excerpts typically used in laboratory-based NLP paradigms.
This presentation analyses freely formulated imagery elicited during a live chamber music concert. The concert formed part of a professionally organised subscription series and included works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Stephen Hough. Audience members completed a written questionnaire in which they described autobiographical memories and fictional stories associated with particular musical movements. Importantly, participants were not recruited in advance; they were invited on site to complete the questionnaire, allowing a real concert-going population to be studied. In total, 447 narratives were collected from 167 individuals.
Analyses using sentence embeddings (SBERT) and word embeddings (word2vec) showed that the imagery was guided by the musical content. Within individual movements, participants’ imagery was significantly more similar to the average of all other semantic embeddings for the same movement—the group “consensus”—than to the average embeddings of other movements. Specifically, mixed-effects modelling revealed a significant main effect for the comparison between within-movement and between-movement similarity (SBERT: β = 0.06, SE = 0.01, t = 9.75, p < .001; word2vec: β = 0.04, SE = 0.01, t = 6.65, p < .001). The semantic content at the level of individual musical movements will also be discussed.
The findings extend previous research to a naturalistic paradigm using complete musical works and show that, even in real-world contexts, individual imagery is shaped by musical features and can at the same time be shared to a high degree.
My contribution focuses on bodily movement gestalts as the basis of mental images of musical sound—in what I have referred to as sound-motion objects. A closer examination of the properties of sound-producing movements can provide a broader ecological basis for understanding Gestalt formation in musical imagery.
It can be shown that fundamental movement principles such as frequency, amplitude, and quantity, together with their derivatives such as velocity, acceleration, jerk, and snap, may be present in sound-producing movements. Principles of motor control, including coarticulation and phase transitions, may likewise be involved. It may therefore be assumed that all of these aspects—to varying degrees—form integral components of musical imagery, in what I have called motor-mimetic imagery.
My central point is that these movement-related properties are real insofar as they belong to actual musical performances. At the same time, however, they often elude more conventional, note-centred Western conceptions of musical imagery.
Clients with schizoid personality organisation often present a particular challenge in verbal psychotherapy because of their tendency towards emotional withdrawal, dissociation, and intellectualisation. Although they frequently possess strong capacities for reflection, establishing emotional contact within approaches such as Gestalt psychotherapy can be difficult and may lead to therapeutic stagnation.
This presentation examines how Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) can support therapeutic work with schizoid-structured clients by making emotional and symbolic material accessible that cannot be reached through verbal interaction alone. GIM uses music to foster altered states of consciousness and spontaneous imagery, enabling clients to explore their inner experiences through images, metaphors, and narrative processes.
People with schizoid personality organisation often have a rich inner fantasy life that should not be understood solely as a defence mechanism, but can also be used as a therapeutic resource. GIM provides direct access to this imaginal world, where clients can encounter emotionally significant content and relational themes in a less threatening, non-verbal form.
The presentation shows how GIM can be integrated within a Gestalt-therapeutic framework and can support the transition from imaginal experience to relational processing. Clinical insights illustrate how music and imagery can foster emotional access, symbolic expression, and greater integration by bridging the gap between cognitive insight and lived emotional experience.
Recent research shows that spontaneous thoughts during music listening can include vivid autobiographical memories and fictional imagery. People experience their imagery as idiosyncratic and personal, yet analyses of free descriptions show that such imagery is in fact widely shared within a culture—even when it is elicited by new and unfamiliar musical excerpts. In addition to shared content, these imaginative experiences also unfold according to a shared temporal structure. Theoretical and methodological advances in the study of spontaneous thought during music listening therefore offer a unique perspective on involuntary mental imagery that is subjectively experienced while also being structurally linked to the musical stimulus.
Developed by Wilhelm Salber in the second half of the twentieth century, Psychological Morphology forms the basis of psychological teaching and research at the BSP Business & Law School in Berlin and Hamburg. Drawing on depth psychology and Gestalt psychology, it developed into an approach that takes the formations of everyday life and culture as its starting point and investigates, in particular, phenomena in business, media, and sport from a psychological perspective. Examples from morphological research illustrate how this approach is applied in practice.
Prof. Dr. Dirk Blothner: Practising Psychology with a Drawing Pen – Wilhelm Salber’s Psychological Sketches
Prof. Dr. Björn Zwingmann: Morphological Film Analysis of Air (Ben Affleck, 2023)
Prof. Dr. Johanna Hodde: Between Anarchy and Dictatorship: The Experience of Art as a Cultural Parameter, Illustrated by Arnold Böcklin’s Painting The Sacred Grove (1882)
Dr. Sven Giebel: Pre-Gestalt Analysis and Advertising Impact
Prof. Dr. Andreas Marlovits: Forms of Play – A Morphological Analysis of Football Matches
in alphabetical order
The paper examines the political detours of Berlin Gestalt theory in the context of anti-fascist exile and colonial critique. Drawing on the history of media and science, it compares the Gestalt-based works of psychologist Werner Wolff and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. By bringing together two heterogeneous settings—Wolff’s research on alienation in European exile between1933 and 1940 and Fanon’s critical analysis of colonial alienation from 1952 to 1960—the paper shows how their work is connected through histories of migration and the shared integration of Gestalt theory and alienation into media-based epistemologies. Instead of tracing a linear genealogy from Wolff to Fanon, the project highlights the epistemological shifts that emerged from their application of Gestalt theory in political contexts, radically expanding its original scope. These shifts are inseparable from the social experiences of exile and alienation and unfold in dialogue with contemporary media practices. Therefore, the project explicitly emphasizes the role of political systems, social structures, and media technologies as resources of Gestalt knowledge. At the same time, it highlights that Gestalt knowledge as a resource had a lasting impact on institutional practices and political movements. To reveal this neglected chapter in the history of Gestalt theory, the paper builds on archival work conducted in the United States and France. The work is part of my doctoral project, which I will begin in September 2026 under the supervision of Prof. Viktoria Tkaczyk at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
The objective of this study is to develop conceptual and empirical tools for defining the auditory equivalents of visually perceived form and material. To provide an empirical basis, the study is anchored in the well-studied “similarity with enlargement” model, developed by Gestalt psychologist Erich Goldmeier. The study suggests auditory analogues to the model, which are tested empirically and yield results comparable to those Goldmeier and other researchers observed in vision.
Investigating the auditory equivalents of visual form and material presents significant challenges due to differences between the modalities. In the visual context, form and material are associated with structures in two and three dimensional space, whereas in the auditory context, time and perceptual aspects of sound such as pitch, loudness, and duration are one-dimensional. The study addresses these challenges by offering new definitions of visual form and material grounded in their unique perceptual features — features that can be identified in audition as well.
The study discusses the methodological steps leading to the creation of these auditory analogues. In doing so, it offers a cross-modal framework for understanding perceived form and material and explores fundamental questions concerning the nature of cross-modal analogies between vision and audition.
Is the rapidly advancing use of AI in film production more of a utopian or a dystopian scenario? While the joint strike by Hollywood screenwriters and actors in the summer of 2023 suggests the latter, an increasing number of entrepreneurs are in an optimistic mood: improving motion capture, creating deepfakes, replacing extras with virtual doubles from a catalog, digitally preserving movie stars and thus making them immortal, and, last but not least, cutting production costs by more than half. What sounds like a savior for small productions in particular—because the possibilities for storytelling are multiplied to infinity—is countered by Leslie Malton, chair of the German Actors’ Association, as follows: “What happens in that moment in front of the screen or on stage, cannot be created by AI because it happens in that moment. And that is what makes it alive.”
Most Gestaltist approaches to film are cognitive and, therefore, cannot properly grasp the state of being alive Malton addresses. This state is nothing other than the vitality examined by the American psychologist Daniel Stern. It focuses on movement and encompasses space, time, force, and directionality. Stern has succeeded in linking the humanities and social sciences by drawing on a theoretical foundation in phenomenology. His research on vitality and the “present moment”—that is, on what happens in that moment—not only provides an answer to the question posed at the outset but also serves as a starting point for investigating vitality forms as affective Gestalts in film psychology.
Dipl.-Psych. Johann Pibert is a doctoral candidate in media studies at the University of Bonn. He is currently transferring the affective film psychology he developed to theater, pop concerts, and other performing arts. He was previously a personal assistant to the president of the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts in Berlin and a research assistant at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Potsdam. He studied psychology and business administration at the University of Mannheim and film studies as well as journalism and communication studies at the Free University of Berlin.
This paper offers a comparative analysis on musical “inner hearing,” as outlined by American music pedagogue Edwin E. Gordon (1927-2015) in his text Learning Sequences in Music (8th ed., 2012), alongside writings by German composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) including Elementary Training for Musicians (1946) and A Composer’s World (1952). Their statements will be presented alongside more recent research, which illumines that inner hearing is not experienced equally, but rather runs on a spectrum from silent to highly vivid.
Gordon coined the term “audiation” in 1975, defined as a process where one thinks of music in the mind, experienced as actual sound, while also understanding its musical context. Gordon concluded that audiation is the cornerstone of musical aptitude, thus the music classroom should focus on developing audiating skills. This is accomplished through using rhythmic and tonal “patterns” as teaching tools. Gordon’s theory of musical learning, Music Learning Theory (MLT), synthesizes concepts from language learning, reading development, behavioral and Gestalt psychology, Piaget’s stages of development, and Gagné’s conditions of learning, alongside his experiences in studying jazz bass. He identified eight types of audiation and six stages of audiation development, supporting tasks including performance, notation reading, composing, improvisation, and beyond.
In contrast, Hindemith’s reputation rests largely on his compositional works alongside pedagogical writings for adults. He explains the composer’s process of musical conceptualizing, requiring advanced inner hearing abilities. Though it is unlikely that these two men ever encountered one another, both articulated congruent ideas on musical inner hearing.
Sebastian Klotz, Paola Tenchini, Serena Cattaruzza, Walter Coppola, Julia Kursell, Riccardo Martinelli, Savina Raynaud
Unter Berücksichtigung der Orte und Infrastrukturen, die Carl Stumpfs philosophisches Denken prägten, untersucht dieser Aufsatz, wie er ein Gleichgewicht zwischen seinem erkenntnistheoretischen Programm und den experimentellen sowie materiellen Verfahren wahrte, die er aus phänomenologischer Sicht betrachtete. Im Streben nach einer allgemeinen Urteilstheorie und einer umfassenden Erkenntnistheorie, die sowohl die logischen als auch die perzeptiven Dimensionen des Wissens integrierte, bezog er verschiedenste Phänomene in seine Arbeit ein: Klänge von Musikinstrumenten, durch Phonographen und Telefone vermittelte Sprach- und Musiklaute sowie eigens konstruierte große Versuchsaufbauten – etwa das Interferenzsystem zur Erforschung der Vokalbildung und -wahrnehmung. Zudem führte er interaktive Interview- und Aufnahmesitzungen zum Tonbewusstsein mit außereuropäischen Musikern durch, wobei er Tonometer, einheimische und westliche Musikinstrumente sowie Phonographen einsetzte. Die Vielfalt der diskursiven Netzwerke (im Sinne von Friedrich Kittlers „Aufschreibesystemen“) und der damit verbundenen Beobachtungs- und Forschungspraktiken, auf die Stumpf zurückgriff, ist bemerkenswert.
Der Aufsatz legt dar, dass diese Ausrichtung die wachsende Bedeutung der experimentellen Ausbildung von Wissenschaftlern in der Physiologie und Psychologie des späten 19. Jahrhunderts widerspiegelt und Stumpfs philosophische Position maßgeblich geprägt hat. Sie trug wesentlich zur Modernität seiner Wissensproduktion bei. Diese war geprägt von strenger philosophischer Reflexion (Logik, Metaphysik, Eidologie, Phänomenologie, Wissenschaftstheorie), verbunden mit einer programmatischen Offenheit gegenüber allen Orten, an denen Phänomene hervorgebracht wurden – was sich etwa in der Gründung von Forschungsinfrastrukturen wie dem Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv manifestierte. Diese doppelte Ausrichtung ermöglichte es Stumpf, sich auf reflexive und empirisch fundierte Weise mit Phänomenen wie Gestalten und Komplexeindrücken auseinanderzusetzen und diese philosophisch zu erforschen. Dieser Aspekt verdient mehr Aufmerksamkeit, als ihm bislang zuteilwurde.
Im prägnanten Vorwort zu *Sprachlaute* (1926) – einem Werk, das in diesem Jahr sein hundertjähriges Jubiläum feiert – hebt Carl Stumpf die Kernpunkte dieser umfassenden, bereits 1913 begonnenen Untersuchung hervor. Wie Karl Bühler (1927) anmerkte, ließ sich Stumpf zwar von der Lehre seines ersten Lehrers Brentano inspirieren – wonach Sinnesphänomene lediglich die „Rinde“ des psychischen Lebens darstellen –, doch widmete er einen Großteil seiner Forschungstätigkeit, insbesondere seiner experimentellen Arbeit, gerade der Erforschung dieser Phänomene (was an Simone Weils Betonung der „Rauheit“ der Realität erinnern mag). Ein meisterhaftes Zeugnis hierfür ist seine *Tonpsychologie* (1883/90), ein unverzichtbares Fundament der Psychologie von Klang und Musik. Nicht weniger bedeutend ist jedoch sein Werk *Sprachlaute* (mit dem Untertitel *Experimentell-phonetische Untersuchungen*), das an das frühere Werk anknüpft und zugleich weitere, breitere Forschungsfelder erschließt.
Während der schrecklichen Jahre des Ersten Weltkriegs entwickelte und verfeinerte Stumpf – inmitten der surrealen Stille seines Berliner Labors – unzählige Beobachtungen auf dem Gebiet der Akustik; es gelang ihm sogar, die Bestandteile von Flüstertönen zu analysieren. Damit trieb er die phonetische Forschung in der Nachfolge Helmholtz’ voran, ließ sich jedoch vor allem von Wolfgang Köhlers Studien zu Vokalen inspirieren. Der theoretische Kern des Werks befasst sich nicht mit den zahllosen möglichen technischen Anwendungen (von der Medizin bis zur Ingenieurwissenschaft), sondern vielmehr mit der Entstehung sogenannter „Komplexqualitäten“, deren markanteste Beispiele Klangfarben und Vokale sind. Auf dieser Grundlage lässt sich eine wünschenswerte Verbindung zwischen Sprachforschung und Gesangstheorie postulieren, wenngleich – wie Stumpf anmerkt – das Interesse von Sprachtheoretikern an einer solch ungewöhnlichen Untersuchung keineswegs selbstverständlich ist. In seiner *Sprachtheorie* (1934) betrachtet Bühler *Sprachlaute* als das ausgereifte Meisterwerk des Berliner Gelehrten, der zwar den Gipfel der Phonetik erreichte, jedoch nicht den weiteren Schritt zur eigentlichen Phonologie vollzog. Auf diesen und weitere damit zusammenhängende Aspekte wird im vorliegenden Beitrag eingegangen.
Dieser Beitrag untersucht, wie Carl Stumpf die musikalische Komposition in seine Überlegungen einbezieht. Ausgangspunkt ist eine Beobachtung zur melodischen Bewegung, die er im zweiten Band seiner *Tonpsychologie* (1890) schildert. Unter der Überschrift „Qualitative Urteile über komponierte Klänge“ beschreibt Stumpf den Eindruck, dass das Klangbild verschiedener Kompositionen von Beethoven und Schubert als bewegt wahrgenommen wird, obwohl sich einzelne Stimmen in der Partitur nicht bewegen. Davon ausgehend verfolge ich drei Fragestellungen: 1) Wie äußert sich Stumpf zu komponierten Klängen in Bewegung? 2) Wie bettet er seine Bezugnahmen auf Kompositionen an anderen Stellen seiner Publikationen ein? Und 3) wie bringt er seine Erfahrung als versierter Violinist ein? Auf diese Weise erhoffe ich mir erstens Aufschluss darüber, wie sein Konzept des komponierten Klangs mit dem der klanglichen Bewegung zusammenhängt; zweitens, wie sich seine früheren Beobachtungen zu komponierten Klängen in der Musik zu seinem späteren Konzept komplexer Qualitäten verhalten; und drittens, wie Stumpf Belege gewinnt. Meine These lautet, dass die Verweise auf Beethoven und Schubert in *Tonpsychologie II* Teil einer Entwicklung hin zur Erzeugung – statt bloßen Sammlung – von Belegen sind.
Carl Stumpfs intellektuelles Profil wurde lange Zeit durch seine Verbindung zu Franz Brentano überschattet. Eine genauere Betrachtung offenbart jedoch einen Denker, der aus einer Vielzahl von Einflüssen schöpfte – darunter Lotze, Ernst Heinrich Weber und Gustav Theodor Fechner – und diese zu einer eigenständigen und originellen Philosophie verband. Unter diesen Einflüssen ist die Beziehung zu Fechner in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur am wenigsten beachtet worden. Stumpf erkannte Fechners entscheidende Rolle bei der Erneuerung der Philosophie durch die empirische Wissenschaft an, und seine *Tonpsychologie* verbindet methodische Elemente, die sowohl auf Brentano als auch auf Fechner zurückgehen. Zugleich lehnte Stumpf Fechners Zwei-Aspekte-Theorie von Geist und Körper ab und kritisierte deren metaphysische Unklarheit. Entscheidend ist, dass sich beide Denker intensiv mit Spinoza auseinandersetzten und zu verwandten, aber dennoch unterschiedlichen Interpretationen gelangten: Während Fechner den spinozistischen Parallelismus modifizierte, indem er eine kausale Wechselwirkung zwischen den Reihen zuließ, interpretierte Stumpf Spinoza unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Intentionalität neu und sah in der Beziehung zwischen Geist und Objekt eine Alternative zum Parallelismus. Trotz ihrer Unterschiede stimmen Fechner und Stumpf somit darin überein, über den psychophysischen Parallelismus hinauszugehen.
Das Thema des vorliegenden Aufrufs und der Veranstaltungsort Berlin boten die Gelegenheit, mit Wilhelm von Humboldt einen bekannten Berliner (und Gründer der gastgebenden Universität) zu lesen, um einige seiner grundlegenden Beiträge zur Erforschung einer lebendigen menschlichen Fähigkeit hervorzuheben: der Sprachfähigkeit. Diese prägt unsere sprachliche, insbesondere onomatologische/lexikalische Kreativität und interlinguistische Kompetenz auf so unterschiedliche Weise, dass sie als „gestaltisch“ verstanden werden kann.
Ein erster Beitrag gebührt dem Sprachphilosophen Anton Marty, einem Schüler Franz Brentanos, dem Autor der „Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt“ (1874).
Wir erinnern auch an die tiefe Freundschaft und berufliche Partnerschaft mit Carl Stumpf, insbesondere in Prag in den frühen 1880er Jahren, einer für beide besonders fruchtbaren und lohnenden Zeit: Marty als Autor der „Subjektlosen Sätze“ und Stumpf als Autor des ersten Bandes der „Tonpsychologie“ (Fisette, 2018).
Eine empirische Perspektive markiert in Martys Werken eine relevante Abkehr von seinem ursprünglichen intellektuellen Ansatz hin zu einem sinnlicheren/erfahrbareren: von der Abstraktion (Thema seines ersten unveröffentlichten Essays von 1867) zur Imagination, von der Begriffsauswahl zum Vergleich sinnlicher Merkmale, die vielfältige und anregende Zugänge zur sprachlichen Symbolisierung eröffnen. [Vergleichen wir beispielsweise das englische Wort „different“ mit dem deutschen „verschieden“: zwei völlig unterschiedliche Bedeutungen für das, was „anderswohin bringt“ (lateinisch dis + fero) bzw. das, was „getrennt ist“ (deutsch ver + scheiden): also Ziel vs. Ursprung.]
Nach seiner ersten aristotelischen Prägung wirkte Marty in einem mehrsprachigen Umfeld, nämlich in Prag, wo Tschechisch (eine slawische Sprache) das „kaiserliche“ Deutsch der Habsburgermonarchie verdrängte, [ganz zu schweigen von der metalinguistischen Auseinandersetzung mit den klassischen Sprachen, die in der Schweiz zur Schule gelernt wurden (Latein und Griechisch), und der Schweizer Mehrsprachigkeit selbst]. Das Thema des Hauptwerks von Wilhelm von Humboldt (Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts, 1836) zeugt von unterschiedlichen Weltansichten, die verschiedene gleichzeitig auftretende Merkmale desselben Objekts, Ereignisses, derselben Beziehung usw. sowie den intersubjektiven Kommunikationsaustausch in den Mittelpunkt stellen.
Wenn dieses Merkmal, insbesondere Martys figürliche innere Sprachform, die Signifikanten innerhalb jeder historischen natürlichen Sprache prägt, trägt ein weiterer Ansatz dazu bei, unterschiedliche epistemische Zugänge zu derselben Bedeutung zu modellieren.
Um die historiografische Rekonstruktion der Theorie empirisch zu untermauern, werden zahlreiche strukturierte Sprachdaten (Korpora) erwähnt und dargestellt.