Kurt Lewin: Individual

“A conflict is to be characterized psychologically as a situation in which oppositely directed, simultaneously acting forces of approximately equal strength work upon the individual.”

Kurt Lewin

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 122.

“In the psychological fields most fundamental to the whole behavior of living things the transition seems inevitable to a Galileian view of dynamics, which derives all its vectors not from single isolated objects, but from the mutual relations of the factors in the concrete whole situation, that is, essentially, from the momentary condition of the individual and the structure of the psychological situation. The dynamics of the processes is always to be derived from the relation of the concrete individual to the concrete situation, and, so far as internal forces are concerned, from the mutual relations of the various functional systems that make up the individual.”

Kurt Lewin

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 41; partly cited in: Kay Deaux, Mark Snyder (2012) The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology. p. 74

Behavior

“A certain area within a channel may function as a “gate”; the constellation of the forces before and after the gate region is decisively different in such a way that the passing or not passing of the unit through the whole channel depends to a high degree upon what happens in the gate region. This holds not only for food channels but also for the travelling of a news item through certain communication channels in a group, for movement of goods, and the social locomotion of individuals in many organizations.”

Kurt Lewin

Source: 1940s, Frontiers in group dynamics II, 1947, p. 145.

Food , Way , Travel , Communication

“The life space… includes both the person and his psychological environment. The task of explaining behavior then becomes identical with (1) finding a scientific representation of the life space (LSp) and (2) determining the function (F) which links the behavior to the life space. This function (F) is what one usually calls a law… The novelist who tells the story behind the behavior and development of an individual gives us detailed data about his parents, his siblings, his character, his intelligence, his occupation, his friends, his status. He gives us these data in their specific interrelation, that is, as part of a total situation. Psychology has to fulfill the same task with scientific instead of poetic means…. The method should be analytical in that the different factors which influence behavior have to be specifically distinguished. In science, these data have also to be represented in their particular setting within the specific situation. A totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually interdependent is called a field. Psychology has to view the life space, including the person and his environment, as one field.”

Kurt Lewin

Kurt Lewin (1946) "Behavior and development as a function of the total situation". In K. Lewin (Ed.) Field theory in social science (pp. 238-305). New York: Harper & Row. p. 240 as cited in: John F. Kihlstrom (2013) " The Person-Situation Interaction" http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/PxSInteraction.htm
1940s

Life , Law , Behavior , Intelligence

“[Life space was defined as] the totality of facts which determine the behavior (B) of an individual (or group/organization) at a certain moment. The life space (L) represents the totality of possible events. The life space includes the person (P) and the environment (E). B = f(L) = f”

Kurt Lewin

P.E
Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 216 as cited in: David Boje, Bernard Burnes, John Hassard (2012) The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change. p. 34.

Life , Behavior , Personality

“The choice between two pleasant things is generally easier than that between two unpleasant unless questions are involved which cut deeply into the life of the individual. Such a conflict situation can upon occasion also lead to an oscillation between two attractions. It is of considerable importance that in these cases a decision between two attractions. It is of considerable importance that in these cases a decision or one goal alters its valence in such a way as to make it weaker than that of the renounced goal.”

Kurt Lewin

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 123.

Life , Way , Question , Decision

“[Progress in psychology depends] upon keeping in mind that general validity of the law and concreteness of the individual case are not antitheses, and that reference to the totality of the concrete whole situation must take the place of reference to the largest possible historical collection of frequent repetitions. This means methodologically that the importance of a case, and its validity as proof, cannot be evaluated by the frequency of its occurrence. Finally, it means for psychology, as it did for physics, a transition from an abstract classificatory procedure to an essentially concrete constructive method.”

Kurt Lewin

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 42 as cited in: Anthony C. Westerhof (1938) Representative psychologists. p. 48.

Law , Dependency

“In its present state of development psychology must be thought of as a young science. There is only one field in which it is relatively well established and in which it has advanced steadily: this is the psychology of sensation and perception. The scientific character of this field is fully recognized. Its findings are based almost entirely on experimental evidence, and even when its theories are in conflict one feels that as far as method is concerned it stands on relatively firm ground. The situation is different with the psychology of will, of needs, and of personality despite the fact that these fields have always attracted popular interest. As recently as fifteen years ago it was assumed that they, by their very nature, were not amenable to scientific methods. The little experimental work that had been done seemed too artificial and abstract to give an insight into the real processes. It was generally accepted that experimental investigations of these elusive and highly complicated processes were intrinsically impossible, at least in so far as human beings are concerned. Thus in Europe these problems were treated in a half-literary, half-philosophical way, and in America the tendency was to study individual differences by means of tests.”

Kurt Lewin

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 3.

Way , Feeling , Nature , Problem

“A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration… The unsuccessful individual on the other hand, tends to show one of two reactions: he sets his goal very low, frequently below his past achievement… or he sets his goals far above his abilities.”

Kurt Lewin

Source: 1940s, Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics, 1948, p. 133 as cited in: Roger Dale, Madeleine MacDonald, Geoff Esland (1976) Schooling & Capitalism: A Sociological Reader. p. 111.

Way , Success , Past

“It is not the similarity or dissimilarity of individuals that constitutes a group, but interdependence of fate.”

Kurt Lewin

Kurt Lewin (1939) "When facing danger". In Lewin, G. W. (Ed.), Resolving Social Conﬂict. London: Harper & Row.
1930s

Fate