ABSTRACT
There were also other anticipations and antecedents of Gestalt psychology, as has been pointed out repeatedly in previous chapters. Although they were not direct anticipators, John Stuart Mill, with his idea of mental chemistry, put forth a similar notion; William James emphasized that the stream of consciousness is a whole, a totality; John Dewey’s criticism of the reflex arc concept was holistic; and even Wilhelm Wundt had emphasized the process of creative synthesis. The philosopherphysicist Ernst Mach used phenomenology much in the way the later Gestalt psychologists did. And indeed other “holistic” psychologies were emerging about the time Gestalt theory was beginning to mature-at Hamburg with William Stern, for example, and at Graz.
