Gestalt is a German word that means, "wholeness, or the entire picture.  The entire picture is more than what is visible, it's the background and the hidden parts that make up the picture as well. Some describe the visual of an iceberg and we only see the tip of what is truly there.   In regards to human beings, it means the whole person - all the person's qualities, likes, dislikes, experiences, memories, preferences, perceptions, combined into one amazing mosaic that makes up YOU.  Gestalt is a form of experience.  The kind that allows a person to not only talk about things, but fully experience things so that everything comes together.  It's like lifting the veil off so that a person has complete clarity about themselves.  It's a level of mindfulness that most may never allow themselves to know, but for those that do, their lives are improved exponentially. 

Gestalt was introduced to the world by the psychologist, Max Wetheimer.  It was his response to structuralism which was defined as breaking everything down into it's smallest parts and analyzing those parts.  In Gestalt, the entire whole of something is examined, not just one piece of the whole. Gestalt psychology helped introduce the idea that human perception is not just about seeing what is actually present in the world around us; its heavily influenced by our motivations and expectations.  It's also all about our perceptions, not just our experiences.  As an artist, I see it as the entire painting, not just the canvas, or the frame, but each and every brush stroke that makes the entire image come to life.