Gestalt qualities () are concepts found in gestalt psychology which refer to the essential nature of a perceptual experience. An example would be how a melody is perceived, as a whole, rather than merely the sum of its individual notes. A formed Gestalt is an entire, complete structure, with clearly defined contours. The quality “trans – positivity” is manifested in the fact that the image of the whole remains even if all the parts change. Gestalt qualities were introduced by the Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels in his essay "On Gestalt Qualities," published in 1890. "Ehrenfels qualities" may be another term for the same phenomena. The qualities were based on tests done by flashing lights for certain amounts of time. This discovery later led to the famous Gestalt effect discovered by Max Wertheimer. Founding of Gestalt theory The origins of Gestalt psychology are incompletely known. In the 1880s, psychologists in Europe were greatly disturbed by von Ehrenfels' claim that thousands of percepts have characteristics which cannot be derived from the characteristics of their ultimate components, the so-called sensations. Chords and melodies in hearing, the shape characteristics of visual objects, the roughness or the smoothness of tactual impressions, and so forth were used as examples. All these "Gestalt qualities" have one thing in common. When the physical stimuli in question are considerably changed, while their relations are kept constant, the Gestalt qualities remain about the same. But, At the time, it was generally assumed that the sensations involved are individually determined by their individual stimuli and must therefore change when these are greatly changed. Both positive and negative esthetic characteristics of the world around us, not only of ornaments, paintings, sculptures, tunes, and so forth, but also of trees, landscapes, houses, cars—and other persons—belong to this class. That relations between the sexes largely depend on specimens of the same class need hardly be emphasized. It is, therefore, not safe to deal with problems of psychology as though there were no such qualities. And yet, beginning with Ehrenfels himself, psychologists have not been able to explain their nature. In the analysis of Gestalts, the whole is primary. The parts are understood within the systematic whole. A paradigmatic example of "Gestalt qualities" is a melody, which sounds the same in any key. In 1890, Christian von Ehrenfels attributed these qualities to melodies as "a positive quality of presentation," not something projected upon sense