Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies.

The assumed physiological mechanisms on which Gestalt theory rests are poorly defined and support for their existence is lacking. The Gestalt theory of perception has been criticized as being descriptive of the end products of perception without providing much insight into the processes that lead to perception.

In the introduction of a recent special issue of the journal Vision Research on Gestalt perception, the authors concluded that "even though they study the same phenomena as earlier Gestaltists, there is little theoretical coherence. What happened to the Gestalt school that always aspired to provide a unified vision of psychology? Perhaps there is, in fact, little that holds the classic phenomena of Gestalt psychology together."