Kurt Lewin

Kurt Zadek Lewin (September 9, 1890 – February 12, 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States.[2] Kurt Lewin, exiled from the land of his birth, made a new life for himself. In this new life, Lewin defined himself and his contributions within three lenses of analysis; applied research, action research, and group communication were his major offerings to the field of communication.

Biography

In 1890, he was born into a Jewish family in Mogilno, County of Mogilno, Province of Posen, Prussia (modern Poland). He was one of four children born into a middle-class family. His father owned a small general store and a farm.[3] The family moved to Berlin in 1905. In 1909, he entered the University of Freiburg to study medicine, but transferred to University of Munich to study biology. He became involved with the socialist movement and women's rights around this time.[3] He served in the German army when World War I began. Due to a war wound, he returned to the University of Berlin to complete his Ph.D., with Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) the supervisor of his doctoral thesis.

Lewin had originally been involved with schools of behavioral psychology before changing directions in research and undertaking work with psychologists of the Gestalt school of psychology, including Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler. He also joined the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin where he lectured and gave seminars on both philosophy and psychology.[3] Lewin often associated with the early Frankfurt School, originated by an influential group of largely Jewish Marxists at the Institute for Social Research in Germany. But when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 the Institute members had to disband, moving to England and then to America. In that year, he met with Eric Trist, of the London Tavistock Clinic. Trist was impressed with his theories and went on to use them in his studies on soldiers during the Second World War.

Lewin immigrated to the United States in August 1933 and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. Earlier, he had spent six months as a visiting professor at Stanford in 1930,[3] but on his immigration to the United States, Lewin worked at Cornell University and for the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station at the University of Iowa. Later, he went on to become director of the Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. While working at MIT in 1946, Lewin received a phone call from the Director of the Connecticut State Inter Racial Commission [4]requesting help to find an effective way to combat religious and racial prejudices. He set up a workshop to conduct a 'change' experiment, which laid the foundations for what is now known as sensitivity training.[5] In 1947, this led to the establishment of the National Training Laboratories, at Bethel, Maine. Carl Rogers believed that sensitivity training is "perhaps the most significant social invention of this century." [5]

Following WWII Lewin was involved in the psychological rehabilitation of former occupants of displaced persons camps with Dr. Jacob Fine at Harvard Medical School. When Eric Trist and A T M Wilson wrote to Lewin proposing a journal in partnership with their newly founded Tavistock Institute and his group at MIT, Lewin agreed. The Tavistock journal, Human Relations, was founded with two early papers by Lewin entitled "Frontiers in Group Dynamics". Lewin taught for a time at Duke University.[6]

Lewin died in Newtonville, Massachusetts of a heart-attack in 1947. He was buried in his home town. His wife died in 1987.

Work

Lewin coined the notion of genidentity,[7] which has gained some importance in various theories of space-time and related fields.[citation needed] He also proposed Herbert Blumer's interactionist perspective of 1937 as an alternative to the nature versus nurture debate. Lewin suggested that neither nature (inborn tendencies) nor nurture (how experiences in life shape individuals) alone can account for individuals' behavior and personalities, but rather that both nature and nurture interact to shape each person. This idea was presented in the form of Lewin's equation for behavior B = ƒ(P, E).

First, and foremost, Kurt Lewin was an applied researcher and practical theorist. Most scholars of the time reveled in the fear that devoting oneself to applied research would distract the discipline from basic research on scholarly problems – thus creating this false binary between to whom is knowledge created for and whether it was for the perpetuation of the discipline or for application.[8] Despite this debate within the social sciences at the time, Lewin argued that “applied research could be conducted with rigor and that one could test theoretical propositions in applied research.” [8] The root of this particular binary seemed to stem from the epistemological norms present within the hard sciences – where the distinction was much more pronounced; Kurt Lewin argued that this was contrary to the nature of the social sciences. Furthermore, with the help of scholars like Paul Lazarsfeld, there was a method through which money could be acquired for research in a sustainable manner.

To demonstrate his dedication to applied research and to further prove that there was value in testing his theoretical propositions, Lewin managed to become a “master at transposing an everyday problem into a psychological experiment.” [8] Lewin, in his beginnings, managed to take a seemingly banal moment between himself and a waiter and turn it into the beginnings of his field research. In this particular incident, Lewin reasoned that the “intention to carry out a specific task builds a psychological tension, which is released when the intended task is completed” in tandem with when Sigmund Freud theorized that “wishes persist until they are satisfied.” [8] This happenstance observation started the demonstration of the “existence of psychic tensions, fundamental to Lewin’s field theory.[8]

While applied research helped develop Lewin into a practical theorist, what further defined him as an academic and a forerunner was his “action research” – a term he coined for himself.[8] Lewin was increasingly interested in the concepts of Jewish migration and identity. He was confused by the concept of how while an individual distanced themselves from performing the Jewish identity in terms of religious expression and performance, they were still considered Jewish in the eyes of Nazis. This concept of denying one’s identity and the promotion of self-loathing as a form of coping with a dominant group’s oppression