Wolfgang Köhler: biography of this German Gestalt psychologist.

This researcher is especially known for his work on cognition and animal intelligence.

Research on how humans learn and are able to understand the world has led many researchers to develop different models and theories. Not only in humans, but we also find great interest in understanding the animal's ability to adapt to the environment and to adapt to the world. animal capacity to adapt to the environment and solve the problems they encounter. problems they encounter.

In this sense, a great deal of analysis and comparative experiments have been carried out throughout history with different species, one of the closest to humans being chimpanzees.

One of the most important and renowned researchers in this area, who became one of the main pillars of the Gestalt school, describing insight learning and who even went on to lead the American Psychological Association was Wolfgang Köhler, whose biography can be found in summary form below..

Short biography of Wolfgang Köhler

Wolfgang Köhler was born on January 21, 1887 in the port city of Reval (today known as Tallinn), in an Estonia then part of the Russian Empire. His family was of Germanic origin, his parents being Franz Köhler and Wilhelmine Girgensohn (school principal and housewife, respectively) and he had a brother and several sisters.

Köhler would live his early years in Estonia but when he was six years old he moved with his family to his parents' home country, Germany, settling in the town of Wolfenbüttel. His father having been the headmaster of a school, education was very important in his family, and it was at the Köhler school that he began to discover a great interest in the arts. would begin to discover a great interest in science, field work and classical music..

Education

Köhler's university education spanned several universities. He would first be accepted at the University of Tübingen in 1905, studying there until a year later. After that he would go on to study at the University of Bonn between 1906 and 1907, and finally he would enter the University of Berlin in the latter year.

At the latter university he studied subjects such as biology, physics and chemistry, being influenced by figures as relevant as Planck and Nernst in the field of physics, and meeting and studying with his thesis tutor, Carl Stumpf.and meeting and studying with his future thesis tutor, Carl Stumpf. He received his doctorate in psychology at this university in 1909 with the dissertation "Akustische Untersuchungen", a thesis on psychoacoustics.

Some major contributions

Shortly after receiving his doctorate, specifically in 1910, Köhler would enter to work to the Psychological Institute in Frankfurtwhere he first worked as an assistant and later became a professor. He would work together with Wertheimer and Kofka in different experiments related to perception, a work that would converge in the creation of the well-known Gestalt school, which focused on the study of forms and considered that the whole was more than the sum of its parts.

In October 1912 he married the artist Thekla Achenbach, and a year later he was recommended and hired as director of the Academia Prusiona de Ciencias de Tenerife, in the so-called Casa Amarilla. There Köhler would carry out different investigations with chimpanzeesanalyzing their cognitive capacities and discovering what would come to be known as insight learning. From this he would write works such as The Mentality of Apesdeveloping different theories on learning and on the existence of intelligence in non-human apes.

The First World War

During the stay of Köhler and his family in Tenerife, different events took place, among which the First World War stands out. Although Köhler initially wanted to wanted to participate in his country's military serviceThis was not possible due to the impossibility of navigating in British-controlled waters. He would remain on the island during the war.

However, there are theories and different suspicions arose about the possibility that Köhler acted as a spy for his government regarding the activity of the British on the island. These suspicions ended up provoking protests from the British consulate, which finally succeeded in having the activity of the Yellow House moved to another location. After this, Köhler returned to Germany in 1920.

Back in his home country, Köhler was hired at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Berlin, of which he would be appointed director in 1921. He divorced his first wife and remarried Lily Harleman in 1927.

He would also become a professor of philosophy and directly involved in research on the Gestalt theory of psychology.He would come back into contact with Koffka and Wertheimer. During these investigations he would come to analyze and criticize introspection due to its subjectivity and would seek the use of more empirical and objective methodologies.

However, he would not be in favor of behaviorism because it was based only on directly observable behavior and obviated covert behavior. He would also travel and work in the United States, together with William James and at the universities of Harvard and Chicago, although he would return to his homeland.

The arrival of the Nazis and emigration to the United States.

The coming to power of the Nazis was another turning point in Köhler's life. Although he did not initially show his opposition to the regime openly, he would eventually publish a critique of it (in fact, it is considered the last published critique in Germany of his regime until its fall) after Planck's resignation was forced and he would begin to act much more critically.

However, although he was apparently not arrested, the regime was imposing imposed more and more restrictions in the academic sphere and increasingly lost and he lost more and more autonomy at the university, to the point that he had to resign and emigrate to the United States in 1935.

Once in the U.S., he worked as a professor of psychology and researcher, he worked as a professor of psychology and researcher at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he worked until his retirement in 1935.where he worked until his retirement in 1955. He also conducted research at Dartmouth College in Hanover.

Köhler, due to his many contributions to psychology during his career, would be elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1959. He had previously received an award from the same institution in 1956.

Death and legacy

Wolfgang Köhler died on June 11, 1967. He died at his home in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

The legacy of this important psychologist lives on to this day and forms part of many current theories. The concept of insight, for example, is still present today.The concept of insight, for example, is still present, as well as his important participation in the Gestalt school.

In addition, the analysis and study of the cognitive abilities of primates allowed the development and reformulation of different theories of learning and the consideration of theories of learning and the consideration of the cognitive abilities of apes and other animals (including and other animals (including chickens). Finally, it would also contribute to the investigation of cortical processes, in aspects such as visual or auditory perception.

Bibliographical references:

• Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2016). A History of Modern Psychology. Eleventh Edition. Cengage Learning.