The Morphological Perspective

During his thirty-year professorship in Cologne (1963–93), Wilhelm Salber developed a concept, based on Goethe’s morphology and influenced by Gestalt and depth psychology traditions, to understand experience and behavior as formative processes. In the 1980s, he increasingly saw the purpose of these formative on and transformation processes in the self-treatment of the psyche, which occurs both on the grand scale of cultural history (Soul Revolution) and in the minutiae of everyday life worlds (Impact Units)—amplified by the manifestations of literature, film, and art. Gestalt and metamorphosis are characteristics of cultivation processes that occur as more or less epochal manifestations of experience and behavior and can be methodically represented through morphological description. The description of Impact Units combines statements from depth interviews according to gestalt-like sense contexts (fit, complement, continuation, intensification, counterflow) in four constant methodological turns (versions) into a structured overall text, which is reflected in the narrative forms of fairy tales and myths.