Kurt Lewin Essay -- essays research papers

Kurt Lewin          Kurt Lewin was a great innovater at his time in the landing field of Psychology. The theories he developed, the methods of reserch he used and the people he influenced all get down had a profound impact on Psychology and even to a greater extent specifically on Social Psychology.      Lewin was born in 1890 in what is straight off Poland but at the time was the Prussian province of Posen, in the crossroads of Moglino and was the second of four children (Greathouse). His parents owned a general fund, and a h 8en on the outskirts of the village. When Lewin was fifteen his family moved away from the small village, the farm and their store and went to Berlin.      It was in Germany was where Lewin began his formal education, but like most people he was unsure of what he really wanted to report at first. In 1909 Lewin began attending the University of Frieberg where he started to st udy medicine. This did not interest him so he transferred to the University of Munich where he tried to study Biology. Again Lewin decided that this was not for him so he transferred for the last time, this time to the University of Berlin where his study of Philosophy and Psychology began (Frostburg). Lewin was express to throw "found many of (the schools) departments courses in the grand tradition of Wundtian psychological science irreverant and dull (Greathouse)." He would eventually receive his Ph.D. in the "experimental study of associative learning" at the University of Berlin in 1916 (Jones).      Lewin was married twice in his life, the first time in 1917 to a schoolteacher named Maria Landsberg with whom he had the first two of his four children, but in 1927 they divorced. In 1929 he remarried to Gertrud Weiss who he had his third and fourth child with (Frostburg). But before Lewin in truth received his degree, he served in the German A rmy during World warfare I. While in the service Lewin rose from the rank of private to deputy sheriff and was wounded in battle (Jones). These experiences may have had a remarkable effect on his later research on group psychology.            afterwards the war in 1921 Lewin began work at the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin, where he had the opportunity to work with Wolfgan... ... to speak where ever he went. Students and colleagues running(a) under at different times and at different institutions have said that they felt like the were "doing important work (Patnoe pg. 15)." and there is actually little that can provide for a better works purlieu then honest pride in ones work.     Kurt Lewins work in fry Psychology, Group Psychology, Social Psychology, the psychology of prejudice and his new methods of testing and retesting theories by means of Action Research were all groundbreaking at the time and hold to have their impact on the field today. But, Lewin was not only a genius in terms of his work in Psychology, he in any case had a great ability to make the people that he was working with better at their own work. Many of his students and colleagues went on to be some(prenominal) of the most influential minds in psychology. The group he worked with at MIT at the end of his life was especially influential. A study in 1984 showed that "eight of the ten most cited social psychologists are direct descendants of this livestock of researchers (Patnoe pg.11)." It is fair to say that Kurt Lewin was the father of modern Social Psychology.