Wolfgang Köhler was born in Reval in the Baltic provinces, Estonia, to German parents. When he was six-year-old, his family moved to Germany and settled in Wolfenbütell.
His University Education
Köhler attended the Universities of Tübingen from 1905 to 1906; University of Bonn from 1906 to 1907 and finally studied at the University of Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1909 from Berlin, under Carl Stumpf (1848-1931). Carl Stumpf may be said to have been the godfather of Gestalt psychology. His thesis was on psychoacoustics.
His Professional Career
After receiving his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1909 he went to Frankfurt as assistant in the Psychological Laboratory. There he met Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, with whom he lay the foundations of Gestalt psychology. The birth of Gestalt psychology was as a reaction to the behavioristic theories of J. B. Watson and I. P. Pavlov and focused mainly on the nature of perception.
In Frankfurt he became Privatozent in 1911.
At the recommendation of Stumpf, who was at Berlin University, Köhler was appointed as director of the Anthropoid Station of the Prussian Academy of Science on Tenerife Island. There he worked from 1913 to 1920. The Island of Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands. It is a Spanish province in the Atlantic Ocean. Here Köhler conducted experiments on problem solving by chimpanzees.
Köhler stayed at Tenerife until 1920, returned to Germany, served as acting director of Berlin laboratory for a year. Then he received the appointment to succeed G. E. Müller at Gottingen after Müller’s retirement in 1921. Then, he received the chance to serve Berlin University after Carl Stumpf’s retirement in 1922.
Why Köhler received the chief post at Berlin University ?
It is worth noting the reason for Köhler’s getting the chief post at Germany’s most important university, the University of Berlin. Such matters are never determined in a simple manner, but the outstanding event has been Köhler’s publication of his Die Physischen Gestalten in Ruhe and imstationärem Zustand in 1920. This was the most scholarly and scientific of books published by Gestalt psychologists. It was right and appropriate that so scholarly a work should have received the recognition that it did.
He was visiting professor at Clark University from 1925 to 1926 and at the University ofChicago in 1935.
Köhler as a physicist
Köhler was always a physicist in his thinking, indebted for the stimulus in his student days at Berlin to Max Planck rather than to Stumpf.
Köhler believed that physics holds the key to the biology that will eventually put psychology in order. In his book on Gestalt Psychology, he discussed field systems and the possibility that their occurrence in the brain establishes the laws, which underlie the formation of perceptions and other psychological Gestalten. It was right and appropriate that Köhler as a physicist work so scholarly and receive the appropriate recognition as a Gestaltist.
The work of the Gestalt psychologists, most of which had been done in Germany, inspired American psychologists to undertake investigations to verify or to extend the German scientific work.
Köhler as a distinguished lecturer
Köhler also worked as a distinguished lecturer for the William James Lectures at Harvard University during 1934 to 1935. The lectures published as The Place of Value in a World of Facts in 1938. In addition to delivering the distinguished Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 1958, Köhler gave the Herbert Longfeld Lectures at Princeton in 1966. These lectures were published as The Task of Gestalt Psychology in 1969.
Köhler Immigrates to the US
Because of Nazi interference with his work, Köhler immigrated to the United States in 1935. There he joined the staff of Swarthmore College as a professor of psychology. In The Place of Value in a World of Facts, Köhler attempted to work out a theory of value including aesthetic value, on the basis of the phenomenally objective Gestalt quality which he called ‘requiredness’, the demand which one part of the field may have for another.
At Swarthmore College, Pa., Köhler remained their unit 1955.
President of APA
In 1956 Köhler was appointed president of the American Psychological Association.
At Dartmouth College
Köhler served as research professor of Psychology at Dartmouth College from 1958 till his death.
Köhler died on June 11, 1967, in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
Wolfgang Köhler was a Germany born American psychologist. He was one of the founders of Gestalt psychology with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka. He received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1909 from the University of Berlin. He developed a psychological theory of perception, which he extended to memory and attention. His major contributions on the psychology of perception include treatises on the assumption of constancy in earlier psychology and studies of figural after effects.
Köhler conducted experiments on problem solving by chimpanzees, revealing their ability to devise and use simple tools and build simple structures. His findings appeared in the classic Intelligenzprufungen an Menschenaffen (1917), (English version : The Mentality of Apes), a work that led to a radical revision of learning theory. Another major work, Physical Gestalt in Rest and Stationary States, was based on an attempt to determine the relation of physical processes in nervous tissue to perception. Outspoken in his criticism of Adolf Hitler’s government, Köhler went to the United States in 1935 and became professor of psychology at Swarthmore College until 1955. He died in Lebanon, New Hampshire, in 1967.
January 9, 1887
He was born in Revel, Tallinn, Estonla, Russian Empire (Now in Estonia).
1893
His family moved to Germany, settled in Wolfenbutell.
1905-1906
He attended the University of Tubingen.
1906-1907
He attended the University of Bonn & Berlin.
1909
He received his Ph.D. from Berlin. He started to work at the Psychological Institute in Frankfurt – am – main.
1911
He became Privatozent at the psychological Institute in Frankfurt – am – main.
1913-1920
He became director of the Anthropoid Station of the Prussian Academy of Science on the Island of Tenerife.
1917
His publication on The Mortality of Apes in (German Language) translated into English.
1925
His publication on Intelligence in Apes in Murchison, c. (Ed.): Psychologies of 1925.
1925-1926
He was visiting professor at Clark University in the United States.
1927
His publication on The Mentality of Apes, New York, Translated in to English.
1929
His first book in English, Gestalt Psychology, was published.
1935
He emigrated to the United States from Germany. He was visiting professor at the University of Chicago. Germany in 1935 Lecturer at Harvard.
1934-35
He was distinguished William James lecturer at Harvard University.
1935-1958
He became professor of psychology and then research fellow of philosophy and psychology at Swarthmore College.
1940
His publication on Dynamics in Psychology, New York.
1951
His publication on Cerebral Mechanisms in behavior, New York & London.
1956
He became the president of the American Psychological Association.
1957
His publication on Gestalt psychology: an introduction to new concepts in modern psychology, New York.
1958
He was research professor of psychology at Dartmouth. He remained there until his death.
June 11, 1967
He died in Enfield.
1969
His publication on The task of Gestalt Psychology.
• On Reality
"It has sometimes been said that we find nowhere in nature an analogue of the difference between ‘happens’ and ‘is’ on the one hand and ‘ought’ on the other hand."
• On Science
"Little would be gained if we tried to demonstrate by philosophical speculation that here must be an error, while science would find itself, just as before, led on its way to the same old paradox."
• On Scientific Study
"The object which exists independently of the observer and are to be the subject of scientific study could not possibly possess all the variegated characteristics, which the phenomenal environment certainly shows."
• On Possible Doubt
"Anatomy, physiology and pathology teach us that about one point there can no longer be any possible doubt."
• On Physics
"Whatever the historical truth, after the elimination of the ‘secondary qualities’ physics developed so rapidly that soon its way of thinking had to be applied to the relation between physical events and the organism."
• On Phenomenal Data
"… I want to show that this solution succeeds entirely even if one maintains, with HELMHOTZ and so many biologists, that phenomenal data ‘belong only to our nervous system."
• On Phenomenal Object
"Nobody has ever seen a phenomenal object localized relative to courtside of his physical body."
• On Phenomenal Self
"When we speak of the phenomenal self, the personality in a deeper sense remains entirely outside of our discussion. We speak here of the self which is intended when we say, ‘I lie down on the couch’, ‘I sit down’, ‘I do go down stairs’, etc."
• On Psychology of Perception
"The psychology of perception is full of instances of mutual influences between the objects and occurrences of the phenomenal environment."
• On ‘Pyramid of Concepts’
"Similarly, I am completely free to think of the classical logic or of the color Pyramid in any arbitrary regions of space, precisely because their quasi-spatial nature neither excludes nor requires coincidence with a definite region of ‘real’ space.
• On Association Theory
"Accordingly, if we are to inquire whether the anthropoid ape behaves intelligently, this problem can for the present be treated quite independently, of theoretical assumptions, particularly those for or against the association theory."
• On Human Intelligence
"The human adult seldom performs for the first time in his life tasks involving intelligence of so simple a nature that they can be easily investigated; and when in more complicated tasks adult men really find a solution, they can only with difficulty observe their own procedure."
• On Misconception
"There is probably no association psychologist, who does not, in his own unprejudiced observations distinguish and to a certain extent, contrast unintelligent and intelligent behavior."
• On Intelligent
"As experience shows, we do not speak of behavior as being intelligent, when human beings or animals attain their objective by a direct unquestionable route which clearly arises naturally out of their organization."
• On Association Theorists
"Association theorists know and recognize what one calls insight in man and contend that they can explain this by their principles just as well as the simplest association (or reproduction) by continuity."
• On Animal Psychologists
"Even animal psychologists have not always paid sufficient attention to this fundamental difference between ‘simple’ human imitation and the imitation we do lightly expect from animals and so people were to a certain extent astonished when it was first shown experimentally that animals do not so easily imitate as expected."
• On Intelligence Tests
"In all intelligence tests which apply to an optically given situation, the subject of the experiment has if one considers the problem well among other tasks, to grasp certain forms and shapes."
• On Chimpanzees Intelligence
"The chimpanzees manifest intelligent behavior of the general kind familiar in human beings. Not all their intelligent acts are externally similar to human acts, but under well-chosen experimental conditions, the type of a intelligent conduct can always be traced."
