Mary Henle
New School for Social Research

Renewed interest in problems first investigated by Gestalt psychologists has brought forth
a variety of so-called "Neo-Gestalt" theories. Although they differ among themselves,
they have in common an interest in such phenomena as perceptual grouping and Prägnanz;
and most of them take an information processing approach to their material. This chapter
examines the underlying assumptions of several of these new psychologies and compares
them to those of Gestalt theory.

The present decade has seen revived interest in problems raised by Gestalt
psychologists some three-quarters of a century ago. In 1981 Michael Kubovy and
James R. Pomerantz prefaced their edited volume with the remark: "This is the
first volume devoted to perceptual organization since Köhler last book, The
Task of Gestalt Psychology, was published in 1969" ( 1981, p. x). Soon after the
publication of Kubovy and Pomerantz's collection, Jacob Beck edited a volume
on Organization and Representation in Perception ( 1982). These books may be
taken as representative of a now substantial literature on perceptual organization.
In the collections mentioned, several authors explicitly label themselves Gestalt
psychologists with specific qualifications. In these cases and others, I will raise
the question: What is their relation to Gestalt psychology? I will consider a
variety of issues that arise in connection with these new efforts to deal with
problems of organization. My treatment will be selective confining itself, for
example, to visual perception and resisting the temptation to go beyond--or

-279-