Kurt Koffka: biography of this Gestalt psychologist

Along with Köhler and Wertheimer, this psychologist was one of the precursors of cognitive psychology.

The German psychologist Kurt Koffka is widely known for helping, together with Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer, to establish the foundations of the Gestalt school, which in retrospect would be a fundamental antecedent for modern cognitive psychology as we understand it.

We briefly review his career and contributions to the history of psychology, paying special attention to his figure in the genesis of the Gestalt movement, inseparable from his other two colleagues but with its own personality, and the importance that this gained against the reductionism in force at the time.

Biography of Kurt Koffka

Koffka was born in Berlin in 1886, in the bosom of a well-to-do family known for its long lineage of lawyers and legal scholars. Even as a young man, Koffka broke with tradition and, instead of opting for a career in law, he studied philosophy at the University of Berlin.

Koffka felt that he belonged in this field, and in 1908 he received his doctorate.. His thesis, entitled "Experimental Investigations of Rhythm", is carried out under the tutelage of Carl Stumpf, an important representative of phenomenological psychology. During this period he lives in Edinburgh, which allows him to perfect his English and obtain an advantageous position with respect to his peers in order to be able to introduce his theories in English-speaking countries before anyone else.

After working in different psychology laboratories that question the dominant German elementarism, Koffka travels to Frankfurt and Main where he associates with Köhler and a newly arrived Wertheimer with thousands of ideas about perception that they could test in numerous experiments. These works would bear their first fruit in 1912, when Wertheimer published an article on the perception of movement that gave birth to the movement that constituted the Gestalt school.

Several years later, after the First World War, he moved to the United States as a university professor and participated, together with Köhler in 1925, as a representative of the Gestalt movement in the conferences at Clark University, conferences in which figures such as Freud and Jung had also participated years before.

Koffka remained active as a university professor, researcher and writer until the end of his life in 1941.

Koffka's contribution from the Gestalt perspective

It is impossible to speak of Koffka's contribution without taking into account the unique collaboration that gave birth to the Gestalt movement. The three names originally associated with it form an indissoluble triumvirate and, to some extent, it is difficult to attribute particular aspects of the theory to each.

However, each of the three played a distinct role in the group and made his own contribution, always from a common basis and respect for the work of the other two.

In the context of a gestalt psychology that breaks with reductionism, which postulated that if psychology was a science then it must be able to reduce phenomena to constituent elements, Koffka is credited with a large body of empirical work..

Probably his most famous contribution is the systematic application of Gestalt principles in his two best known works: The Growth of the Mind (1921) y Principles of Gestalt Psychology (1935).

The infantile mind

In The Growth of the Mind, Koffka argues that early infant experiences are organized as "wholes," rather than the chaotic jumble of stimuli that William James says newborns perceive. As they grow older, Koffka says, children learn to perceive stimuli in a more structured and differentiated way, rather than as a "whole."

Koffka devotes much of this book to arguing against trial-and-error learning. He, through Köhler's research, argues for the insight. That is, that true learning occurs through understanding the situation and the elements that compose it, not by finding the solution to a problem by pure chance.not by finding the solution to a problem by pure chance. This revolutionary concept contributed greatly to the shift in the American pedagogical approach from rote learning to learning by understanding.

Perception and memory

In Principles of Gestalt Psychology, Koffka continues with the line of research from which the gestalt movement was originally born: visual perception.. In addition, he brings together the vast amount of work carried out by members of the gestalt group and their students and delves into topics such as learning and memory.

Koffka gives great importance to the work on perceptual constancy, through which humans are able to perceive the properties of an object as constant, even if conditions such as perspective, distance or illumination change.

In discussing learning and memory, Koffka proposes a trace theory. He assumes that each physical event experienced triggers a specific activity in the brain, which leaves a trace memory in the nervous system even if the stimulus is no longer present.

Once the memory trace is formed, all subsequent related experiences will involve an interaction between the memory process and the memory trace. This circularity where old traces affect new processes is reminiscent of Piaget's theories, which together with Lev Vygotsky would become the foundation of constructivism.

Likewise, following this theory he also explains forgetting. He gives a very important role to the availability of traces, an idea that is surprising because of its similarity to the explanations we have today about memory.

It is undeniable that Koffka, both as an individual and as the founder of Gestalt, is a fundamental pillar of modern psychology.. Both through cognitivism and constructivism, we see his legacy reflected.