Vittorio Benussi’s Genetic-Experimental Phenomenology of Perception and its Place in the History of Gestalt Psychology

For a long time, starting from Boring, Vittorio Benussi’s position and role in the history of phenomenological psychology, and more generally in the history of psychology, has been prejudicially under-appreciated. He was considered a follower of the Graz School, whose scientific con-tributions, while relevant, were destined to be absorbed into the much more significant results achieved by the Berlin Gestalt school. This essay aims to radically review this stereotyped image, highlighting the originality and actuality of Benussi’s theoretical and experimental project. The latter combines a phenomenology of the perceptual field, aiming to highlight, in agreement with the gestaltist theoretical framework, its autochthonous structuring according to specific principles or laws, with a genetic phenomenology, designed to unveil the temporally structured gene-sis of intentional conscious experiences, and their stratified unfolding. These experiences, in fact, are organised on several levels, based on one another, and not merely juxtaposed.