Mapping our Life Space Based on Needs

This article explores the concept of mapping our life space based on needs. Kurt Lewin was an American social psychologist influenced by Gestalt psychology who developed the Field Theory of Learning in the 1930s. This theory emphasized individual personalities, interpersonal conflict, and situational variables. He proposed that behavior is the result of the individual person and their environment.

Lewin wrote that “like any perceiving individual, the traveler will note certain features of the environment, necessarily ignoring or deleting others and integrating the ones he or she does note into some coherent picture, for memory, comparison, orientation, meaning making, and so forth.” When considering how this works in a specific situation, it seems Lewin meant that each person (as a subject or traveler) who might be standing on a busy corner of a downtown city will notice things and behave in a way based on their interpretation of the whole picture of the scene in the area. What they notice is more than just the physical inputs received by their sensory system.

Each person will see and notice a somewhat different whole picture of a downtown city scene, based on their subjective and interpretive understanding of complex elements in the environment. One person may notice the visual features of buildings, windows, concrete, and glass, etc. Another person may notice the auditory sounds of car engines, honking, industries at work, or people talking. A different person from these other two may notice the olfactory sensations of scents and smells wafting from the rain, food cooking from restaurants, and engine exhaust from cars.

The specific characteristics noticed of objects, images, or patterns in the scene may involve contrast, boundary lines, brightness, contiguity, and more. All these environmental qualities are then filtered through the lens of each person’s interpretations to create a whole picture of their experience and perception.

Going further beyond this, Lewin had insight about how each person sees (selects, integrates, interprets) and remembers the scene differently. He believed it was the “need or concern that is uppermost in the individual’s mind at the time that will tend to carry the most weight in selecting and organizing the perceptions of that person.” Each person is operating in a different world or reality with flexible and creative perceptions that are organized into a field of awareness relevant to them. They are actively interpreting in a shared situation with others based on their own agenda.

This acting and reacting is not based on the real scene in a downtown city, but instead on a relevant, constructed, and evaluated scene that has been created within the mind. They are responding and behaving to the interpreted scene, which is organized based on their unique needs and goals. Lewin referred to this process as “mapping.” Lewin also had a name for the relevant field people are mapping, which he termed the “lifespace.” It was the part of everything that is psychologically relevant to a person's concerns as they move proactively to resolve a workable map in relation to their concerns, and an awareness of their inner states, needs, and goals.

As mentioned previously, this concept of mapping is an important Gestalt process described by Lewin that involves people responding to and acting in a way based on their interpretation of a scene or situation they experience. This interpretation is created and organized in the mind and based on the person's most relevant psychological needs and goals at the time.

It's important to mention that a person’s values are an essential aspect of their felt needs, goals, and desires -- especially in the process of organizing their individual mapping for behavior in any given situation. Lewin summed up his work by saying “the need organizes the field.”

The world each of us knows is the world we are trying our best to cope with and thrive in. It’s a world we create in relation to our most urgent needs in the moment. These needs are formulated through a complex system of interpreted perceptions, inner experience, emotion, values, intentions, and goals. This whole pattern creates our map and life space.

Sources

Wheeler, G., & Axelsson, L. (2015). Gestalt Therapy. Theories of Psychotherapy Series.