Gestalt

Gestalt refers to the school of psychology founded in early twentieth-century Germany, emphasizing that perception organizes sensory information into unified wholes rather than discrete parts.

Gestalt principles describe how we group visual elements—by proximity, similarity, or continuity: Gestalt psychology explains why we see constellations rather than random stars.

The term appears in compounds like Gestalt therapy and Gestalt theory. (Lowercase gestalt is the general concept of a unified whole.)