This revolutionary concept contributed greatly to the shift in the American pedagogical approach from rote learning to learning by understanding. In other words, true learning occurs through understanding the situation and the elements that make it up, not through finding the solution to a problem by pure chance. He, through KГ¶hlerвЂ™s research, defends the insigh t. Koffka devotes a large part of this book to arguing against trial-and-error learning. As they grow older, says Koffka, children learn to perceive stimuli in a more structured and differentiated way, rather than as a вЂњwhole. In The Growth of the Mind, Koffka argues that early childhood experiences are organized as вЂњeveryoneвЂќ, rather than the chaotic confusion of stimuli that newborns perceive, according to William James. Probably his most famous contribution is the systematic application of the Gestalt principles in his two best known works: The Growth of the Mind (1921) and Principles of Gestalt Psychology (1935). In the context of a gestalt psychology that breaks with reductionism, which postulated that if psychology was a science then it should be capable of reducing phenomena to constituent elements, Koffka is attributed a great body of empirical work. However, each of the three played a different role in the group and made their own contribution, always from a common base and with respect for the work of the other two. 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. It is impossible to talk about KoffkaвЂ™s contribution without taking into account the unique collaboration that gave birth to the gestalt movement. Koffka remained active as a university professor, researcher and writer until his last day in 1941. Several years later, after the First World War, he moved to the United States as a university professor and participated, together with KГ¶hler in 1925, as a representative of the Gestalt movement in the Clark University conferences, conferences in which figures such as Freud and Jung had also participated years before.

These works would bear their first fruit in 1912, when Wertheimer publishes an article on the perception of movement that gives birth to the movement that constitutes the Gestalt school. During this period he lived in Edinburgh, which allowed him to perfect his English and obtain an advantageous position with respect to his colleagues in order to introduce his theories in English-speaking countries before anyone else.ДЄfter working in different psychology laboratories that question the dominant German elementarism, Koffka travels to Frankfurt and Main where he associates with KГ¶hler and a newly arrived Wertheimer with thousands of ideas about perception that could be tested in numerous experiments. His thesis, entitled вЂњExperimental Investigations of RhythmвЂќ, is carried out under the tutelage of Carl Stumpf, an important representative of phenomenological psychology. Koffka felt that he belonged to this field and ended up getting his doctorate in 1908. From an early age, Koffka broke with tradition and instead of studying law, he studied philosophy at the University of Berlin.

Koffka was born in Berlin in 1886 into a well-to-do family known for its long line of lawyers and legal scholars.

We briefly review his trajectory 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 companions but with his own personality, and the importance that this took on in the face of the reductionism in force at the time. The German psychologist Kurt Koffka is widely known for helping, together with Wolfgang KГ¶hler and Max Wertheimer, to lay the foundations of the Gestalt school, which in retrospect would be a fundamental antecedent for modern cognitive psychology as we understand it.

Viktor frankl biografГ­a

Viktor frankl biografГa