...one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology. Lewin is often recognized as the "founder of social psychology" and was one of the first researchers to study group dynamics and organizational development.
Also of note is that Lewin founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT, a center that moved to the University of Michigan after his death.
I suspect that most social psychologists would consider themselves Lewinians, at least in the broad sense of aligning themselves with the following basic Lewinian themes: the conceptualization of behavior as a function of the person and the environment, the effects of situations and forces in our "fields," and the importance of cognitive representations.
In contrast to the (presumably) widespread acceptance that Lewin's general ideas would receive today in social psychology and related disciplines, the number of current scholars specializing in the finer points of Lewinian theory, such as the life space, would appear to be much smaller. The latter researchers have, however, created a number of documents about Lewin and his ideas, from which I provide some additional readings (below).
Most people seem to pronounce Lewin, “Lu-win.” I first learned what I believe is the German pronunciation, “Le-veen.” When I first got to graduate school at the University of Michigan, based on my pronunciation, one of the professors told me that I must have gotten my undergraduate instruction in social psych from an “old school” professor. Indeed I did, from the late Hal Gerard at UCLA.
In the spirit of Lewin's field theory, I offer the following song...
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Lewinian Fields Forever
Lyrics by Alan Reifman
(May be sung to the tune of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” John Lennon)
Let me help you trace,
Kurt Lewin’s life space,
A theory of fields,
That’s what it yields,
A bathtub for a diagram,
Lewinian fields forever,
Life space, vectors, matrices,
That's how he drew his depictions,
With his topological perspective, you can see,
How social life may be like physics,
Let me help you trace,
Kurt Lewin’s life space,
A theory of fields,
That’s what it yields,
A bathtub for a diagram…
Lewinian fields forever,
Regions, valences, barriers,
That’s how we represent our worlds,
In our cognitive environmental maps, you see,
That’s how each of our lives, unfurls…
Let me help you trace,
Kurt Lewin’s life space,
A theory of fields,
That’s what it yields,
A bathtub for a diagram…
Lewinian fields forever,
Regions, valences, barriers,
That’s how we represent our worlds,
In our cognitive environmental maps, you see,
That’s how each of our lives, unfurls…
Let me help you trace,
Kurt Lewin’s life space,
A theory of fields,
That’s what it yields,
A bathtub for a diagram…
Lewinian fields forever...
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Further Reading
Victor Daniels (Sonoma St.) maintains a nice online repository of Lewin information, including explanations of Lewinian concepts and teaching activities (here and here).
Doyle, C.L. (1987). Explorations in Psychology. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. See pages 331-335.
Book review of The Lewin Legacy: Field Theory in Current Practice. Edited by Eugene Stivers and Susan Wheelan. Proceedings of the Kurt Lewin Conference, Temple University, May 3-4, 1984. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986, 381 pp. Reviewed by Anthony R. Pratkanis. American Journal of Psychology, Winter 1989, Vol. 102, 563-567.
Chapter by R.J. Rummel on “Psychological Field Theories”
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