Kurt Lewin and the Field Theory

In the history of psychology there are few figures as important and influential as Kurt lewin. This researcher was not only one of the promoters of the Gestalt psychology, but is also considered the father of the Social psychology and the organizational psychology.

Kurt Lewin was also the creator of the Field theory, which has served as the basis for developing research on group dynamics, highly applicable in the organizational and business environment. Next, to understand his legacy, we will go back to the years when Kurt Lewin developed his ideas.

The firsts years

Kurt Lewin was born in 1890 into a Jewish family residing in Mogilno, a town that at that time belonged to the kingdom of Prussia and that today is part of Poland.

After he and his family moved to Berlin, Kurt Lewin began studying medicine at the University of Freiburg but soon after moved to Munich to undertake a career in biology. Back in Berlin, and without having finished his training, he became more interested in psychology and philosophy, a discipline that he began to study in 1911. At that time he had already begun to participate in initiatives linked to socialism, Marxism and the struggle for the the rights of women, and he believed that applied psychology could be of help in promoting reforms in favor of the equality.

Forging Gestalt psychology

With the outbreak of the First World War, Kurt Lewin was sent to the front to serve as a gunner. However, he was immediately injured, so that he remained convalescent for several days. At that time he began to make a description of the battlefield using topological terms reminiscent of the one that would be made from the Gestalt theory, which at that time was being forged, and which also reminded the topological theory that he himself would create something more late.

Once he had returned to Berlin, In addition to obtaining a PhD in philosophy, Kurt Lewin began working at the Berlin Psychological Institute. It is there that he came into contact with two other great representatives of Gestalt psychology: Wolfgang Köhler Y Max wertheimer. The crossing of ideas between them allowed the ideas belonging to the Gestalt current to be consolidated and, at the same time, served as breeding ground for the laboratory to be a place where young promises of European psychology, such as Bluma, were to be trained Zeigarnik.

Kurt Lewin in the United States

In 1933, when Hitler and the Nazis rise to power, Kurt Lewin decides to move immediately to another country. He ends up immigrating to the United States after unsuccessfully trying to get a position as a university professor in Jerusalem, and Thanks to Wolfgang Köhler's contacts, he gets to work at Cornell University to later move on to Iowa. In 1944 he became director of the Group Dynamics Research Center at MIT in Massachusetts.

During this time, Kurt Lewin works especially on social phenomena that have to do with social interaction, and investigates from the The effects that social pressure has on children's eating habits, up to the work dynamics that are more effective in the organizations. Therefore, the realms touched by Kurt Lewin went far beyond what used to be associated with repertoire of activities of a psychologist, whether of the Gestalt current or any other school.

When Kurt Lewin died in 1947, had already left open a door that would give way to the new branch of psychology: social psychology.

The Force Field Theory

In the years that Kurt Lewin lived in America, the behaviorism it was the prevailing paradigm in the United States. Behaviorists understood that human behavior is the result of the way in which the environment influences individuals, but Lewin started from a vision of psychology very different from this. He, like the Gestalt representatives in Europe, understood that people are not a simple passive agent who reacts to stimuli, but rather they act according to the way in which they perceive that they themselves interact with the environment. Interaction was, therefore, the fundamental element from which Kurt Lewin started in his analysis.

The Theory of the Field is his way of expressing the idea that psychology should not focus on the study of the person and the environment as if these were two pieces to be analyzed separately, but it is necessary to see the way in which they affect each other in real time. That is why Kurt Lewin worked with categories such as "living space" or "field": what was interesting for him were the dynamics, the changes, and not the static images of what happens at each moment, which he understood were only used to describe what happens in each phase of a process, and not to explain.

To describe the processes of change, Kurt Lewin was inspired by the studies of physics and borrowed the idea of ​​the force field. For him, group or individual behavior can be understood as a process of change that leads from an initial situation to a different one. Thus, Lewin's Field Theory establishes that what happens while this process of change is developing happens within a dynamic field in which the state of each part of this force field affects all the rest.

The most important variables that are acting in the fields or "vital spaces" are, for Kurt Lewin, the tension, the force and the necessity, thanks to which the behavior has a purpose.

Kurt Lewin and action research

Kurt Lewin understood that, since in a force field all parts affect each other, To understand human behavior, all the variables that are intervening in real time in the actions of people and groups must be taken into account, from the space they are in to the temperature, the way they socialize with each other, etc. In addition, these elements cannot be analyzed in isolation, but we must focus on studying their interactions to have a holistic view of what is happening.

But this gives rise to an idea that at that time was revolutionary: as what is studied does not is something isolated but the interaction, do not be afraid of affecting the object of study as researchers. Moreover, intervening in the force field allows us to introduce dynamics that will help us understand the mechanisms that work in it.

In short, according to Kurt Lewin, influencing these dynamics helps to have a faithful image of what is happening. This was crystallized in one of the most famous phrases of this psychologist: to understand a system, you have to change it. It is the principle of action research that Kurt Lewin proposed as an effective method for understanding and improving social dynamics.