Kurt Lewin: The Foundations of an Academic Life

Abstract

For most of his working life, Kurt Lewin was known as a pioneering child psychologist. In 1939, Lewin appears suddenly to move his focus from children to adults and from laboratory experiments to changing behavior in the real world. This paper examines when and how, as a supposedly laboratory-based child psychologist, he developed the motivation, skills, knowledge and tools necessary to become the “intellectual father” of social and organizational change. It investigates Lewin's formative years, his education - especially his doctoral studies at the University of Berlin, and his military service in WW1. The paper concludes that rather than seeing Lewin as a pioneering child psychologist, we need to see him as a pioneering and campaigning psychologist, who had been studying human behavior (adult and child) and how to change it since beginning his doctoral studies in 1911, and applying this knowledge to organizations for almost as long.