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Kurt Koffka (March 18, 1886 – November 22, 1941) was a German psychologist. He was born and educated in Berlin. Along with Max Wertheimer and his close associates Wolfgang Kohler they established Gestalt psychology. Koffka’s interests were wide-ranging, and they included: perception, hearing impairments in brain-damaged patients, interpretation, learning, and the extension of Gestalt theory to developmental psychology.

Personal Life:

Kurt Koffka was born on March 18, 1886 in Berlin. His father, Emil Koffka was a lawyer and royal councilor of law. His mother, Luis Levy was of Jewish decent but listed herself as protestant. Koffka’s younger brother Freiedrich later became a judge. In 1909, Koffka married Mira Klein, who was an experimental subject in his research. They remained married until 1923 when he divorced Klein and married Elisabeth Ahlgrimm who had recently finished her Ph.D at Giessen. However, they were divorced in the same year, and Koffka remarried Klein.[1] During the First World War, he worked for the military in a position that later lead him to a professorship in experimental psychology. In 1927, he accepted a position at the Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he remained until his death in 1941.

Education

Early in Koffka’s life, his uncle, a biologist whose interests were in the fields of philosophy and science helped to educate him. He learned how to speak English from an English governess and was also educated at the Wilhelms-Gymnasium. This was one of the best-known schools in the city. Koffka’s family was well-known for more than a generation in the legal professions. He later broke this tradition when he enrolled in the University of Berlin as a philosophy student and earned his PhD there in 1909 as a student of Carl Stumpf. His thesis under Carl Stumpf was entitled: Experimental-untersuchungen zur Lehre vom Rhythmus (1909; Experimental Investigations of Rhythm).

In addition to his studies in Berlin, Koffka also spent one year 1904-1905 at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he developed his strong fluency in English. This was a skill that later served him well in his efforts to spread Gestalt psychology beyond German borders and familiarizing himself with British psychology. When he returned to Berlin, he decided to change his studies from philosophy to psychology. Koffka was already working at the University of Frankfurt when Max Wertheimer arrived in 1910 and invited Koffka to participate as a subject in his research on the phi phenomenon.

Koffka left Frankfurt in 1912 to take a position at the University of Giessen, forty miles from Frankfurt, where he remained until 1924. Putting his English fluency to the test, Koffka then traveled to the United States, where he was a visiting professor at the Cornell University from 1924 to 1925, and two years later at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Contributions to Psychology

In the early 20th century, Koffka worked with Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer as a representative of the gestalt movement. He helped to establish the theories that gave rise to the school of Gestalt psychology. He is known today as the chief spokesperson of Gestalt psychology.

In 1913, Koffka began editing a series of publications entitled Beiträge zur Psychologic der Gestalt (Contributions to the Psychology of the Gestalt). American psychologists were exposed to Gestalt psychology in 1922 in his article entitled: Perception: An Introduction to the Gestalt-Theorie, which appeared in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of Koffka’s major contributions was The Growth of the Mind in 1921. Koffka wanted to provide some sort of evidence supporting Gestalt psychology to the field of developmental psychology. This book was later translated into English in 1928. Fourteen years later in 1935 he wrote: Principles of Gestalt Psychology. This book helped members of the Gestalt group and their students bring their Gestalt point of views together. It is also most notable for topics such as, perception, learning, and memory.

Koffka believed that most of early learning is what he referred to as, "sensorimotor learning," which is a type of learning which occurs after a consequence. For example, a child who touches a hot stove will learn not to touch it again. Koffka also believed that a lot of learning occurs by imitation, though he argued that it is not important to understand how imitation works, but rather to acknowledge that it is a natural occurrence. According to Koffka, the highest type of learning is ideational learning, which makes use of language. Koffka notes that an important time in children's development is when they understand that objects have names.[2]

References:

^ Koffka, Kurt, Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 2001. ^ A History of Psychology: Ideas and Context. King, Viney, and Woody, 2009.
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External Links: Kurt Koffka - Cofounds Gestalt psychology, Applies Gestalt principles to child development http://www.gestalttheory.net/ http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/gestalt.html
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