Wolfgang Kohler

Wolfgang Köhler (Tallinn, Estonia, January 21, 1887 - Enfield, New Hampshire, United States, June 11, 1967), psychologist, was one of the main theorists of the School of Gestalt, director of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Berlin from 1921 to 1935 and president of the American Psychological Association since 1956. Among his most widely disseminated works are the informative works "Gestalt Psychology " and "The mentality of apes".

Biography

Academic Life

Wolfgang Köhler was born on January 21, 1887 in Reval, today Tallinn, the capital of the present Republic of Estonia.

He studied at the universities of Tübingen, Bonn and Berlin. In the latter, he would study under the teaching of experimental psychologist Carl Stumpf, director of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Berlin, whom he would later succeed in the post. He was also a disciple of the physicists Max Planck and Walther Nernst, whose teaching would exert a notable influence on his work. In 1909 he defended his thesis on sound perception, sound psychology or psychoacoustics & # 34; Akustische Untersuchungen I & # 34;, directed by Stumpf himself.

Professional Path

Gestalt School

His professional career began the same year, when he was hired as E. Schumann's assistant at the Psychology Laboratory of the University of Frankfurt am Main. In this institution he would coincide with Kurt Koffka and Max Wertheimer, with whom he would collaborate in the famous experimental studies on the perception of movement and the stroboscopic effect that would mark the starting point for the so-called Gestalt School.

Tenerife Anthropoids Station

On Carl Stumpf's recommendation, Köhler is hired as director for the newly established Tenerife Anthropoid Station, in the Canary Islands, programmed under the auspices of Wilhelm Waldeyer and the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Since 1913, Köhler will settle with his family in the Yellow House, headquarters of the Anthropoids Station in Tenerife, to study and write reports on psychology compared to primates, replacing the psychologist Eugen Teuber in the post. In 1914, the outbreak of the First World War meant the confinement of Köhler and his family on the island, thus preventing the annual replacement in the direction of the center initially planned by the Academy. This situation made Köhler permanent director of the Station until its closure in 1919. His reports, "Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden" and "Zur Psychologie des Schimpansen", which would compose part of his later compilation on ethology and psychology in anthropoids "The Mentality of Apes".

At the same time, the development of the war would imply an increase in misgivings about the Köhler family in Puerto de la Cruz, the location of the Station and place of residence for a large British community. Suspicions fall squarely on W. Köhler, who allegedly served as a supply agent for military submarines, or used the primate laboratory as a radio station at the service of the German army. Finally, in 1917, the British consul in Tenerife would present a formal protest to the Spanish authorities where he would directly accuse Köhler of supplying food to the German submarines. Despite Köhler's opposition to abandoning the Casa Amarilla, the headquarters of the Station would be transferred the following year.

Berlin Institute of Psychology

During the academic year 1920-1921 he worked as a professor at the University of Göttingen, where he would replace Georg Elias Müller in the year of his retirement.

After the publication of his work "Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im Stationären Zustand", ("Physical Forms at Rest and in Steady State") the previous year, Wolfgang Köhler obtained the chair of Philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1921, succeeding Carl Stumpf himself, and consequently assuming the direction of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Berlin, until his abandonment in 1935. In the same year, he founded, in collaboration with Wertheimer, Koffka, Kurt Goldstein and Hans Gruhle, the influential journal on perceptual psychology, Psychologische Forschung.

Between the years 1925 and 1926, he would also work as a visiting professor at Clark University, Massachusetts, assisting again as a lecturer in 1929. In 1934 he collaborated as a lecturer at the William James Lectures on Phylosophy and Psychology, at Harvard University, subsequently reproducing the content of his exhibition in the work "The place of values in a world of facts".

Divorced from Thekla, he married again on July 9, 1927 with Lili Harleman, of Swedish origin. In 1929 he published the first great systematic work dedicated to Gestalt psychology: & # 34; Gestalt Psychology & # 34;. A revised edition of the work is published in 1947 under the title "Gestalt psychology: an introduction to new concepts in modern psychology".

Move to the United States

In 1935, Köhler worked as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. The same year, after his disagreements and resistance to the growing control by Nazi leaders of German universities, he moved to the United States, where he held the post of researcher at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, until his retirement in 1955.

In 1956, a year after his retirement, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association. The same year he received from this same institution the Distinguished scientific contribution award . At the same time, he continues to pursue his research at Dartmouth College.

In 1958 he entered the list of invited scholars for the Gifford lectures, at the University of Edinburgh. Years later he would be commemorated in Germany as Ehrenbürger , (honorary citizen), of Berlin. In November 1966 he inaugurated the memorial lectures in honor of his personal friend Herbert Sydney Langfeld, at Princeton.

He was also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Wolfgang Köhler died at his home in Lebanon, in the New Hampshire foothills near Dartmouth, on June 11, 1967.

Work

• Köhler, W. "Akustische Untersuchungen. I. Inaugural-DissertatiNon", J. A. Barth, (1909).
• Köhler, W. "Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden", Kgl. Akad. d. Wiss. (1917).
• Köhler, W. "Zur Psychologie des Schimpansen: v. 5 of Aus der Anthropoidenstation auf Teneriffa", (1921).
• Köhler, W. "The mentality of apes", transl. from the 2nd German edition by Ella Winter. London: Kegan, Trench and New York: Harcourt, Brace and World (1925). Original was Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden, Berlin 1917. 2nd German Intelligenzprüfungen an MenschenaffenBerlin: Springer 1921.
• Köhler, W. "Gestalt psychology." New York: Liveright. London: Bell 1930.
• Köhler, W., Wallach, H. "Figural after-effects: an investigation of visual processes". American Philosophical Society (1944).
• Köhler, W. "Gestalt psychology: an introduction to new concepts in modern psychology." New York: Liveright (1947).
• Köhler, W. "The Place of Value in a World of Facts." Liveright, 1976, reprinted edition. (1947)
• Köhler, W. "Dynamics in Psychology." Grove Press (1960).
• Köhler, W. "The Task of the Gestalt Psychology", Princeton University Press, (1969).
• Henle, M. (ed). "The selected papers of Wolfgang Köhler." New York: Liveright (1971).