Reference no: EM133674705

Assignment:

"The transmission of Gestalt psychology was a complicated affair, but several points are especially striking. One major conclusion is that, like the transit of the new physics to America, the diffusion of Gestalt psychology from Germany to the "The "transmission of Gestalt psychology was a complicated affair, but several points are especially striking. One major conclusion is that, like the transit of the new physics to America, the diffusion of Gestalt psychology from Germany to the United States began long before Hitler came to power. Americans were too interested in German ideas and Germans too interested in American opportunities to wait until political events forced them into contact.

By 1930 Gestalt psychology was firmly established in the United States as a psychological school, and graduate students interested in a Gestalt-focused education in psychology knew where to study. The rise of the Nazis certainly contributed to the completion of the migration, but it did not determine the direction in which American psychology developed. Another point worth noting is that Americans found that they had to react to at least three different factors-Gestalt psychology, the Gestalt movement, and the Gestalt psychologists themselves. They responded differently to each. Some, like Boring, were attracted by Gestalt experimental work but reacted negatively to Gestalt theory. And clearly, despite Koffka's disclaimer, the protagonists of Gestalt theory constituted a movement that tried to convert Americans to their view of the world. Americans quite naturally resented their missionary efforts.

The personalities of the psychologists involved - both German and American - also helped shape the course of the migration. Certainly Kohler's formality, Boring's oversensitivity, and the concern for status that both men shared affected their interactions. And yet, despite the dominance of behaviorism, American psychology was open to Gestalt ideas, and today many Gestalt interpretations of psychological phenomena have joined the mainstream of modern American psychology. Certainly perception is an area of research molded by Gestalt ideas. Even in the 1920s and 1930s, the experimental work of leading American psychologists strongly exhibited the influence of the Gestalt approach to their science. Lashley's stress on basic neural mechanisms and, especially, Tolman's "Purposive Behaviorism" - one of the most influential approaches to psychology in the 1930s - clearly owed much to Gestalt theory.

That both were offered positions at Harvard at a time when Kohler's suitability for such a position was being debated further illustrates how Americans differentiated between the psychologists and the ideas. In other areas of psychology, too, Gestalt concepts have been influential. Lewin's work, for example, with its stress on an individual's interaction with his or her "life space" or social field, has done much to shape modern social psychology. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, I think we can conclude that the Gestalt psychologists themselves were well received in the United States. To be sure, the few who still define themselves as Gestalt psychologists argue that America did not give their teachers what it should have.

But in many ways, this attitude is reminiscent of the situation of the 1920s and early 1930s when Koffka and Kohler allowed their movement to get the better of their ideas and preached to the Americans, trying to convert the heathen to the true gospel. In any event, all major Gestalt psychologists found positions in America in the middle of the depression and were able to carry on with the work they had started in Germany. This work enriched American psychology greatly and did much to counter the attractions of extreme behaviorism. If Gestalt psychology has today lost its identity as a school of thought-and very few of Koffka's, Kohler's, Wertheimer's, or Lewin's students call themselves Gestalt psychologists-it is not because the mainstream of American psychology has swamped their ideas. Rather, their work has done much to redirect this mainstream, which adopted many of their points of view. Few other migrating scientific schools have been as successful."

According to these document, how did academic psychology differ in interwar Europe and the United States? What challenges did the immigrant psychologists face?