ABSTRACT
Shortly after Kurt Lewin’s death in 1947, Edward Tolman estimated that when the history of 20th-century psychology was written, Freud’s and Lewin’s names would stand above all the others. Lewin, however, no longer seems quite so current as Freud. Many of Lewin’s own primary ideas have seeped into the social sciences and become general currency, without specific attribution. The connections between Lewin and his extraordinary group of students have been obscured by time. Few other than those with a serious interest in the history of psychology know that he or those working with him developed group dynamics, cognitive dissonance theory, the first studies of autocractic/democratic/lassiez faire leadership, social exchange theory, gatekeeper phenomena, the Zeigarnik effect, or action research. Nor is it simple, even on reviewing his life’s work, to give an easy summary (see Marrow, 1969, for a full length intellectual biography). A proponent of individual case studies, he generated standard quantitative experiments; an advocate of applied research, he wrote theoretical papers with explicit logical and mathematical derivations; a leading figure in the Gestalt approach to perception, he wrote on conditioned reflexes and Freudian psychody-namics; a prolific empirical researcher, he elaborated an epistemology he learned at the feet of Cassirer; a professor on two continents who sought work on a third, he did some of his most valuable work chatting in coffee houses; often called the father of academic social psychology, he is also the ancestor of encounter groups. In a recent and welcome “great man” sort of history of Communication, Rogers (1994, chap. 8) devoted a full chapter to Lewin, without mentioning field theory, this chapter’s topic. In studying Lewin, we are all like the blind men examining the elephant. Perhaps I will be forgiven for not discussing any of the contributions Rogers does.
