Dr. spires talks with some students before psychology class begins. spires says, "i believe that mental experience is best understood as a whole, rather than in terms of its parts." her students recognize that spires describes which school of thought?

The answer is Gestalt.

Gestalt psychology was a school of psychology founded in the 20th century that provided the foundation for the modern study of perception. Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has been "placed," or "put together." There is no exact equivalent in English, in psychology the word is often interpreted as "pattern" or "configuration."

Gestalt

Explanation:

According to this school of thought, the mind configures, through certain principles discovered by this same current, the elements that reach it through the sensory channels (perception) or memory (thought, intelligence, and problem-solving). In the experience that the individual has in his interaction with the environment, this configuration has a primary character on the elements that comprise it, and the sum of the latter could not generate by itself the understanding of mental functioning. This approach is illustrated with the axiom that says:

The whole is different from the sum of the parts.