Kurt Koffka

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) was a German psychologist and cofounder of Gestalt psychology who developed its accounts of perception and child development.

Max Wertheimer: A German psychologist whose apparent-motion experiments helped establish Gestalt psychology. Wertheimer’s motion studies helped launch the movement Koffka joined and developed.
Gestalt psychology: A psychological approach that studies organized wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to isolated parts. Koffka helped formulate and popularize this movement’s principles.
Principles of Gestalt Psychology: Koffka’s 1935 book presenting Gestalt psychology’s theories of perception, learning, and development. This book is his broadest systematic statement of the movement’s principles.
Gestalt psychology in the United States: The development of Gestalt psychology in American research and teaching during the twentieth century. Koffka’s move to Smith College helped establish the movement in the United States.
Wolfgang Köhler: A German psychologist who studied perception and animal insight and helped found Gestalt psychology. Köhler and Koffka jointly introduced Gestalt ideas to English-speaking audiences.
Gestalt principles: Perceptual tendencies by which elements organize into coherent forms, such as proximity and closure. These principles describe the organization of perception Koffka sought to explain.
The Growth of the Mind: Koffka’s book on child development, first published in German in 1921 and later translated into English. It applies Gestalt concepts to how children develop perception and understanding.
Smith College: A private liberal arts college for women in Northampton, Massachusetts, founded in 1871. Koffka taught psychology at Smith College after emigrating from Germany.
Kurt Lewin: A German-American psychologist who developed field theory and applied Gestalt ideas to motivation and social behavior. Lewin extended the Gestalt tradition that Koffka helped establish.
Perceptual organization: The processes by which sensory elements are grouped into coherent objects and patterns. Koffka treated organization, rather than sensation alone, as central to perception.

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