Köhler, Wolfgang

(1887-1967)

   psychologist and physiologist; a founder of Gestaltpsychologie. Born in the Baltic city of Reval (now Tallinn in Estonia), he pursued studies in history, philosophy, psychology, and natural science. Upon taking his doctorate at Berlin in 1909, he became an assistant at the psychological institute of Frankfurt's new university. Working in 1912 with Max Wertheimer* and Kurt Koffka, he helped lay the foundation for Gestalt psychology. Upon completing his Habilitation, he was appointed in 1913 by the Prussian Academy of Sciences to direct research on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. Isolated during World War I—he remained until 1920—he used his lengthy solitude to reflect on Gestalt psychology. In 1917 he published Zur Psychologie der Schimpansen (Mentality of apes) and in 1920 Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationaren Zustand (Physical being at rest and in a stationary condition).

   Kohler became acting director of Berlin's psychological institute in 1920. He taught at Gottingen in 1921 and then returned to Berlin as director of the psy-chological institute; through 1929 he worked with Wertheimer. A critic of the so-called atomistic psychologies (structuralism and behaviorism), he sponsored the notion that presumed human experience is based on organized wholes and not on a sum of atomistic perceptions. In response to opponents, he argued that the human mental process is not greater than the sum of its parts; rather, it is different from the sum of its parts.

   Kohler was an outspoken critic of the Nazis. Following a visiting appointment at Harvard (1934-1935), he resigned his Berlin positions to teach at Swarthmore. From 1958 until his death he was a research professor at Dartmouth.

   REFERENCES:Ash, "Gestalt Psychology"; IEPPPN; Wolfgang Köhler, Task of Gestalt Psychology; NDB, vol. 12; Fritz Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins.