Wolfgang Köhler

January 21, 1887 (age 80)

Reval, Estonia

In 1909 Kohler became assistant at the Psychological Institute at Frankfurt am Main. At the institute Köhler met Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka; the collaboration that followed was the beginning of Gestalt psychology. Köhler remained at Frankfurt until 1913. During this period he continued his auditory studies and wrote an important paper, "On Unnoticed Sensations and Errors of Judgment" (1913). This sharp criticism of the elementarism of the prevailing psychology was the first published expression of Gestalt psychology as a protest movement. In 1913 Köhler became director of the Anthropoid Station of the Prussian Academy of Sciences on the island of Tenerife. Intending to stay for a year, he was unable to return to Germany until 1920 because of World War I. At Tenerife, Köhler carried out important work on perceptual functions in chimpanzees and hens. He began to search for new ways of training that would replace the tedious procedures current in studies of animals. As in the problem-solving experiments, when he devised situations that were simple, direct, and fully visible, the ease of learning increased dramatically. Another major work of this period was his book Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand (1920), which examines the relations between Gestalt psychology and physics. Could a psychology whose fundamental category is gestalt be related to the other sciences? A "gestalt" is a structure that has specific properties as a whole and whose characteristics can therefore not be derived from those of constituent elements. Gestalt properties, as Christian von Ehrenfels had shown in 1890, are transposable; for example, a melody in one key can be recognized in another. Are such structures exclusive to psychology? An affirmative answer would mean an unfortunate isolation of psychology from the other sciences. Köhler found that although physicists might describe them from different points of view, there are physical events that show the same characteristics as gestalts in psychology. Having demonstrated in physics specific wholes showing characteristic structural properties, Köhler turned his attention to what he called "the Wertheimer problem, " known today as isomorphism. This hypothesis, which Wertheimer had adumbrated in 1912, is that there is a structural identity between organized psychological phenomena and the corresponding events in the nervous system. Köhler worked out the hypothesis more and more specifically over the years, first developing it as a physiological theory of perception and then extending it to memory and to attention. The hypothesis has been much criticized and often distorted; in Köhler's hands it became a powerful heuristic, leading to the discovery of figural aftereffects, a discovery that spurred a great deal of research. Köhler further used figural aftereffects to clarify his perceptual theory. Then he began directly testing his theory that steady cortical currents correspond to organized perceptions. This work again drew much criticism; an almost exclusive interest of researchers in the activity of single cells turned attention away from the more molar phenomena investigated by Köhler. The status of the theory remains unclear because it has not been tested since Köhler's own early explorations. Whatever its ultimate status, it seems clear that a theory of perception must include molar physiological events. When Köhler returned to Germany in 1920, he was appointed acting director of the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin. He spent the following year as professor of psychology at the University of Göttingen and in 1922 returned to Berlin as professor of philosophy and director of the Psychological Institute. The institute flourished during the years of Köhler's directorship, becoming what many regarded as the foremost psychological institute of its time. In addition to Köhler, Wertheimer was in Berlin until 1929, and Kurt Lewin until 1932. These three attracted students from many countries. A journal was founded, Psychologische Forschung, which contained the work of Gestalt psychology between 1921 and 1938. Köhler's own work of this period extended his experimental contributions to new areas, the most notable of which was, perhaps, his work with Hedwig von Restorff and others on memory and recall; later Köhler became interested in the nature of associations, bringing this central concept of traditional psychology under the category of gestalt. Psychologische Forschung also contains Köhler's polemical articles, answering attacks on Gestalt psychology from traditional psychologies. Köhler taught in the United States as a visiting professor at Clark University in 1925-1926, as William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1934-1935, and as visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1935. Two of his important books came out of these visits. Gestalt Psychology (1929) was written in English, for America; it not only surveys the theories and findings of Gestalt psychology but extends the critique to American behaviorism, which is shown to resemble in important respects the traditional European (and American) introspectionism, against which the polemics had previously been directed. The Place of Value in a World of Facts (1938) grew out of his lectures at Harvard. Here values, whose neglect by other psychologies was one of the reasons for the emergence of Gestalt psychology, are shown to be entirely compatible with natural science. Values are treated not as merely subjective but in terms of requiredness, which can be identified in nonphenomenal contexts as well as in phenomenal ones. As in his earlier work, Köhler was concerned with showing the relation of psychology to natural science. In January 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany. Very soon Jewish professors and other opponents of the regime were dismissed from the universities. Their colleagues kept silent. On April 28, 1933, after the dismissal of James Franck, a great experimental physicist, Köhler spoke out. He wrote for a newspaper the last anti-Nazi article to be printed openly in Germany under the Nazi regime. In 1935 Köhler immigrated to the United States, where he became professor of psychology and then research professor of philosophy and psychology at Swarthmore College. He became an American citizen in 1946. He retired from Swarthmore in 1958 and continued his work at Dartmouth College. In that same year, he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh. An overview of Gestalt psychology appears in his Herbert Langfeld Lectures at Princeton; these lectures were published posthumously as The Task of Gestalt Psychology (1969), which is perhaps the best summary of Gestalt psychology for the beginner. The contributions of Köhler the natural scientist and philosopher were not confined to psychology. His perceptual theory brought him directly into physiological research. His examination of evolutionary theory brought to the fore an often neglected but essential aspect of the theory, which he called its principle of invariance; in doing so, he again set psychology in its place in the world of nature and broke out of the nativism-empiricism dichotomy. His book Physischen Gestalten brought new perspectives to physics itself. Phenomenology was the starting point of his experimental work, and he concerned himself explicitly with philosophical problems so often covered up in psychology. Although Gestalt psychology was neither well understood nor accepted in predominantly behavioristic America, Köhler was received with great respect. He lectured widely, both in America and in Europe.

Wolfgang Köhler Edit Profile

psychologist

Background

Wolfgang Kohler was born on January 21, 1887 in Reval, Estonia to German parents, Franz Köhler, an educator and Wilhelmine Girgensohn. When he was six, his family returned to Germany.

Education

Köhler attended school in Wolfenbüttel and then went to the universities of Tübingen (1905-1906), Bonn (1906 - 1907), and Berlin (1907 - 1909), where he studied under Carl Stumpf, Max Planck, and Walther Nernst. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1909; his dissertation was based on auditory investigations.

Career

In 1909 Kohler became assistant at the Psychological Institute at Frankfurt am Main.

At the institute Köhler met Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka; the collaboration that followed was the beginning of Gestalt psychology. Köhler remained at Frankfurt until 1913. During this period he continued his auditory studies and wrote an important paper, "On Unnoticed Sensations and Errors of Judgment" (1913). This sharp criticism of the elementarism of the prevailing psychology was the first published expression of Gestalt psychology as a protest movement.

In 1913 Köhler became director of the Anthropoid Station of the Prussian Academy of Sciences on the island of Tenerife. Intending to stay for a year, he was unable to return to Germany until 1920 because of World War I.

At Tenerife, Köhler carried out important work on perceptual functions in chimpanzees and hens. He began to search for new ways of training that would replace the tedious procedures current in studies of animals. As in the problem-solving experiments, when he devised situations that were simple, direct, and fully visible, the ease of learning increased dramatically.

Another major work of this period was his book Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand (1920), which examines the relations between Gestalt psychology and physics. Could a psychology whose fundamental category is gestalt be related to the other sciences? A "gestalt" is a structure that has specific properties as a whole and whose characteristics can therefore not be derived from those of constituent elements. Gestalt properties, as Christian von Ehrenfels had shown in 1890, are transposable; for example, a melody in one key can be recognized in another. Are such structures exclusive to psychology? An affirmative answer would mean an unfortunate isolation of psychology from the other sciences. Köhler found that although physicists might describe them from different points of view, there are physical events that show the same characteristics as gestalts in psychology.

Having demonstrated in physics specific wholes showing characteristic structural properties, Köhler turned his attention to what he called "the Wertheimer problem, " known today as isomorphism. This hypothesis, which Wertheimer had adumbrated in 1912, is that there is a structural identity between organized psychological phenomena and the corresponding events in the nervous system. Köhler worked out the hypothesis more and more specifically over the years, first developing it as a physiological theory of perception and then extending it to memory and to attention. The hypothesis has been much criticized and often distorted; in Köhler's hands it became a powerful heuristic, leading to the discovery of figural aftereffects, a discovery that spurred a great deal of research. Köhler further used figural aftereffects to clarify his perceptual theory. Then he began directly testing his theory that steady cortical currents correspond to organized perceptions. This work again drew much criticism; an almost exclusive interest of researchers in the activity of single cells turned attention away from the more molar phenomena investigated by Köhler. The status of the theory remains unclear because it has not been tested since Köhler's own early explorations. Whatever its ultimate status, it seems clear that a theory of perception must include molar physiological events.

When Köhler returned to Germany in 1920, he was appointed acting director of the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin. He spent the following year as professor of psychology at the University of Göttingen and in 1922 returned to Berlin as professor of philosophy and director of the Psychological Institute. The institute flourished during the years of Köhler's directorship, becoming what many regarded as the foremost psychological institute of its time. In addition to Köhler, Wertheimer was in Berlin until 1929, and Kurt Lewin until 1932. These three attracted students from many countries. A journal was founded, Psychologische Forschung, which contained the work of Gestalt psychology between 1921 and 1938. Köhler's own work of this period extended his experimental contributions to new areas, the most notable of which was, perhaps, his work with Hedwig von Restorff and others on memory and recall; later Köhler became interested in the nature of associations, bringing this central concept of traditional psychology under the category of gestalt. Psychologische Forschung also contains Köhler's polemical articles, answering attacks on Gestalt psychology from traditional psychologies. Köhler taught in the United States as a visiting professor at Clark University in 1925-1926, as William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1934-1935, and as visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1935. Two of his important books came out of these visits. Gestalt Psychology (1929) was written in English, for America; it not only surveys the theories and findings of Gestalt psychology but extends the critique to American behaviorism, which is shown to resemble in important respects the traditional European (and American) introspectionism, against which the polemics had previously been directed. The Place of Value in a World of Facts (1938) grew out of his lectures at Harvard. Here values, whose neglect by other psychologies was one of the reasons for the emergence of Gestalt psychology, are shown to be entirely compatible with natural science. Values are treated not as merely subjective but in terms of requiredness, which can be identified in nonphenomenal contexts as well as in phenomenal ones.

As in his earlier work, Köhler was concerned with showing the relation of psychology to natural science. In January 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany. Very soon Jewish professors and other opponents of the regime were dismissed from the universities. Their colleagues kept silent. On April 28, 1933, after the dismissal of James Franck, a great experimental physicist, Köhler spoke out. He wrote for a newspaper the last anti-Nazi article to be printed openly in Germany under the Nazi regime.

In 1935 Köhler immigrated to the United States, where he became professor of psychology and then research professor of philosophy and psychology at Swarthmore College. He became an American citizen in 1946.

He retired from Swarthmore in 1958 and continued his work at Dartmouth College. In that same year, he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh. An overview of Gestalt psychology appears in his Herbert Langfeld Lectures at Princeton; these lectures were published posthumously as The Task of Gestalt Psychology (1969), which is perhaps the best summary of Gestalt psychology for the beginner. The contributions of Köhler the natural scientist and philosopher were not confined to psychology. His perceptual theory brought him directly into physiological research. His examination of evolutionary theory brought to the fore an often neglected but essential aspect of the theory, which he called its principle of invariance; in doing so, he again set psychology in its place in the world of nature and broke out of the nativism-empiricism dichotomy. His book Physischen Gestalten brought new perspectives to physics itself. Phenomenology was the starting point of his experimental work, and he concerned himself explicitly with philosophical problems so often covered up in psychology.

Although Gestalt psychology was neither well understood nor accepted in predominantly behavioristic America, Köhler was received with great respect. He lectured widely, both in America and in Europe.

Achievements

Kohler's best-known work, still widely studied, is Mentality of Apes. His contributions include a remarkable paper on psychological anthropology, a field virtually untouched at the time (1937). Köhler first demonstrated the possibility of physical gestalts in the nervous system, since neural events are the physical facts that correspond most immediately to psychological ones; then he extended his investigation to other physical phenomena. He received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (1956), whose president he became in 1959. He received the Wundt Medal of Die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie and was elected its honorary president in 1967. He was made an Ehrenbürger of the Free University of Berlin, a rare honor for an American, in recognition of his help in establishing its psychological institute. Köhler's work was done with zest.

Works

Psychologische Probleme (German Edition) Psychologische Probleme (German Edition)

The Mentality of Apes The Mentality of Apes

Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler

$Psicolog\u00EDa de la forma (Spanish Edition) Psicolog\u00EDa de la forma (Spanish Edition)$

book
- Psychologische Probleme (German Edition)
  (Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Sp...)
- The Mentality of Apes
  (Originally published in 1924, this early work on the inte...)
- Psicología de la forma (Spanish Edition)
  (En este libro están recogidas las conferencias pronunciad...)
- Gestalt Psychology
- Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler

Views

He praised the patriotism of those who had not joined the Nazi party and expressed appreciation of the contributions of Jews. For Köhler followed two years of courageous struggle against the regime in an attempt to save the institute.

Quotations: "Trespassing is one of the most successful techniques in science. "

Personality

Kohler never glossed over an error but always acknowledged and corrected it to get on with the scientific matter at hand. He had a passion for clarity, in the formulation of research problems and in thinking and writing. A man of courage, he was one of the very few German professors to stand up against the Nazis. He was revered by his colleagues and students and respected by his opponents. He was also generous with his time, helping younger colleagues, assistants, and students. He was remarkably sensitive, to persons, to art, to nature, to the nuances of language. Distinguished in appearance, dignified, modest, direct in his approach to people and to ideas, he possessed a quiet sense of humor.

Interests

The arts, particularly music, meant much to him.

Connections

Köhler married his first wife in 1912; they had four children before their divorce. On July 9, 1927, he married Lili Harleman; they had one child.

Father:: Franz Köhler
Mother:: Wilhelmine Girgensohn
Spouse:: Lili Harleman

Main Photo