x, the family moved to Germany and settled in Wolfenbuttell. Kohler attended the universities of Tubingen, Bonn and Berlin, receiving his PhD in 1909. In the same year, he started to work at the Psychological Institute in Frankfurt-am-Main. There he met Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, with whom he lay foundations of the Gestalt psychology. It was born as a reaction to the behavioristic theories of Watson and Pavlov and focused mainly on the nature of perception. In 1913, Kohler became director of the Anthropoid Station of the Prussian Academy of Sciences on the Island of Teneriffe. He remained there through WWI and started to work on The Mentality of Apes. After his return to Germany, Kohler became director of the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin. He founded with his colleagues discussion forum about Gestalt Psychology. Because of the Nazi interference with his work, Kohler immigrated to the United States in 1935 (Lefrancois 2000). He continued to write books in the United States, engaging in fierce battles with behaviorists such as Hull and Watson. He was awarded the scientific contribution award by the American Psychological Association and served as president of that association. From 1958 until his death, he was research professor of psychology at Dartmouth College. Kohler died on June 11, 1967 in New Hampshire.His contributions to Gestalt theory are widely acknowledged. The German word “Gestalt” usually means shape or form, but Kohler gave it new dimensions: “In the German language—at least since the time of Goethe, and especially in his own papers on natural science, the noun “gestalt” has two meanings: besides the connotation of shape or form as a property of things, it has the meaning of a concrete individual and characteristic entity, existing as something detached and having a shape or form as one of its attributes. Following this tradition, in gestalt th...
