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Born: March 18, 1886; Died: November 22, 1941.
Koffka’s first encounter with philosophy and psychology was via Alois Riehl at the University of Berlin. After a year in Edinburgh, which confirmed Koffka in his Anglophilia, he returned and concentrated on psychology, obtaining the doctorate in 1908 under Carl Stumpf with a dissertation on auditory and visual rhythm. Koffka then moved to Freiburg and Würzburg for short stays, and then to Frankfurt in 1910, where he encountered both Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer. Together they formed the “big three” of the emergent psychological movement Gestalttheorie(Gestalt Theory or Gestalt psychology). Many philosophical and psychological insights were blended in this movement, which rapidly gained adherents in Europe and soon also in America as an alternative to established psychologies, structuralism on the one hand with its narrow and atheoretical stance, and behaviorism on the other with its exclusion of mind....
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Gibson, J. J. (1971). The legacies of Koffka’s Principles. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 7(1), 3–9.
Koffka, K. (1921). Die Grundlagen der Psychischen Entwicklung: Eine Einfuhrung in die Kinderpsychologie. Osterwieck am Harz: A. W. Zickfeldt. Ogden, R. M. (Trans.) (1924). The growth of the mind: An introduction to child psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Koffka, K. (1922). Perception: An introduction to the Gestalt-theorie. Psychological Bulletin, 19, 531–585.
Koffka, K. (1935). Principles of Gestalt psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
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Devonis, D.C. (2012). Koffka, Kurt. In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_100
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