Gestalts and Strange Loops

If you have been reading my blog regularly, you might have noticed a slight shift from deep, technical programming and mathematics-related topics to more psychological ones.

But, what is the common between the two topics? What is the actual, core topic that I’m interested in exploring? Let’s explore.

I have read many books, but the two books I spent a ton of time studying are:

Gödel, Escher, Bach, for which I wrote an overview here and here.
Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, for which I wrote an overview here (and the author’s autobiography here)

After realizing the above observation, I asked myself, what is the common thing between those two books? I thought to myself, “There must be something since I spent so much time reading and enjoying both”. And there is! It turns out that both concepts are pretty much related to one another.

While Perls and Hofstadter start from different points – one from psychology, the other from cognitive science – they both explore how the self emerges from recursive, interconnected processes:

A Gestalt refers to a unified whole that arises from the integration of its parts.
A Strange loop is an emergent phenomenon arising from the brain’s ability to reflect on itself.

Both Gestalts and Strange loops converge on the idea that the self is an emergent pattern. In Gestalt therapy, unfinished businesses form loops (unfinished Gestalts) that repeat until integrated. Similarly, Strange loops are recursive feedback systems that build self-awareness by continually referencing themselves.

Both frameworks reject a fixed, static view of the self, focusing on its ever-evolving nature. Whether through Gestalt therapy’s focus on wholeness or Strange loops’ cognitive recursion, the self is a dynamic interplay of parts forming a coherent whole.

Mermaid code

graph TD
    A[Theoretical Foundation - Self Reference]
    A -->|Mathematical<br>Foundations| B(Formal Systems<br>Proofs)
    A -->|Psychology| C(Consciousness & Identity)
    A -->|Philosophy| E(Self, Meaning<br>Mind Emergence<br>Patterns)    
    B -->|Mathematics| D(Gödel's Theorems<br>Recursion)
    C -->|Gestalt Therapy| G(Holism, Integration<br>Unfinished Business)
    D -->|Programming| F(Algorithms)
    D -->|Music & Art| H(Bach's Fugues<br>Escher's Paradoxes)

Strange loops offer a conceptual framework to understand how self-awareness arises (theory), while Gestalt therapy provides an experiential path to resolving the recursive loops of human experience (practice). Similarly how programming is the practical part based on mathematics, the theoretical part.

Why does this matter? These two ideas reveal that the self is both a lived and conceptual phenomenon—a strange loop of Gestalts that make us who we are. By integrating these ideas, we gain a deeper appreciation for human identity’s complex, dynamic nature.

So, what would be the answer to the initial question? I think that the core topics that I’m interested in exploring are humans and nature 🙂