The Lewin Legacy: Field Theory in Current Practice

I have attended quite a few conferences and meetings devoted to the ideas of Kurt Lewin. Among these the 1984 conference at Temple was out- standing for its high quality. What made it so successful? Several things. The conference included a stimulating mix of generations. The first generation of women who obtained their Ph. D. 's in psychology in Berlin in the 1920's strike me as a remarkable group. Now in their 80's, they are characterized by enormous vigor and energy. They are still professionally active. Two of them - Tamara Dembo and Maria Rickers- Ovsienkina - joined us. Other participants in the Temple conference had been in Iowa in the 1930's and 1940's, or at MIT. Of course there were many who had learned about Lewin from their own teachers, and in some cases, their teachers' teachers. There was a good mixture of ap- plied psychologists and academics. Father said on several occasions that he did not want to found a school of psychology as such. Rather he wanted to introduce the field theoretical viewpoint and approach. I think he would have been stimulated by and enthusiastic about the many diverse areas to which Lewinian analy- ses, ideas, and concepts are applied today, as illustrated by this volume. He would have been pleased to see so many people applying basic theoreti- cal concepts to important social problems. Father loved to discover new things about America.