In Chapter 11, we focus on creativity and design in the context of group operations and productivity. We discuss the importance of structure to effective group performance and describe practices and considerations that, if implemented, promote the effectiveness of group facilitation. In addition, we discuss a wide variety of techniques that can be utilized to enhance group decision making, problem solving, and the building of trust and member engagement. We introduce strategies for dealing with conflicts among group members.

This chapter adopts a longitudinal perspective on the evolution of activities of thinking in different domains, following people’s engagements; it thus gives a glimpse into the evolution of pleasures of thinking in the course of life. First, it examines specific trajectories of engagements and shows how the pleasure of thinking may have played a key role in people’s choice to maintain and pursue an interest, chosen or accidentally met, for instance in gardening or in billiards. Second, it retraces the trajectories of thinking and their pleasure in long-term, lifecourse commitments, for instance in the lives of Kurt Lewin and Henri Tajfel. Finally, based on recent interviews and observational data, the chapter explores the development of the pleasure of thinking in older people.

Gestalt psychology originated as a German intellectual movement heavily influenced by the precedents of the Würzburg school and phenomenological approaches to science. The early Gestaltists directly challenged Wundt’s structural psychology and were largely successful in pursuing the traditions of Brentano and Stumpf. Originating in Wertheimer’s research on apparent movement, or the phi phenomenon, the Gestalt principles were founded on the assumption of the inherent organization of person-environment interactions. The writings of Köhler and Koffka expanded the perceptual basis to formulate a comprehensive system of psychology especially amenable to higher thought processes of insight, understanding, and productive thinking. When the movement was threatened with destruction by the intellectual sterility of Nazi tyranny, the leaders fled to America. Unfortunately, the Gestalt movement was out of tune with the prevailing behavioristic character of American psychology. However, the Gestaltists assumed an important role in broadening the basis of behaviorism to foster a complete view of learning processes. One application of Gestalt views, contained in Lewin’s field theory, met with success in providing an empirical model of personality and social activities. The Gestalt movement, although it did not retain a separate identity, contributed greatly to the reformulation of psychology.