A movement in psychology which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, representing a move away from the atomistic outlook that had been prevalent in psychology, particularly in terms of perception research. Gestalt psychology started with the notion of a gestalt, and thus postulated that, in terms of perception, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Gestalt psychology formalized the perceptual mechanisms that facilitate our experience.

Gestalt psychologists such as Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) were interested in the principles that allow unconscious perceptual mechanisms to construct wholes or gestalts out of incomplete perceptual input. For instance, when a smaller object is located in front of a larger one, we perceive the protruding parts of the larger object as part of a larger whole, even though we cannot see the whole because the parts are discontinuous. This is known as the Principle of Continuation. Gestalt principles such as this are held to capture innate structuring mechanisms that constrain perception. Gestalt psychology has been influential in cognitive linguistics in that it provides evidence that unconscious mental processes constrain experience.

This general position is adopted by cognitive linguists in refuting objectivist semantics.