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Kurt Lewin as metatheorist
Author(s) -
Henle Mary
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(197807)14:3<233::aid-jhbs2300140307>3.0.co;2-n
Subject(s) - metatheory , personality , psychology , citation , epistemology , sociology , social psychology , computer science , philosophy , world wide web
Lewin's theoretical volumes on personality tell us very little about the nature of the human individual, his stable motives, his aspirations and talents, his conflicts and anxieties, his temperament. Examples deal, rather, with momentary, often trivial, situations of the person. It is the thesis of this paper that Lewin's silence on the more permanent aspects of personality is not an “unfortunate oversight,” as one writer put it. Rather, Lewin was engaged in a different task, that of developing a metatheory — working out the formal requirements of a theory of personality, whatever its content, not himself formulating a theory of personality. From this point of view, the abstractness, even austerity of Lewin's concepts can be understood and perhaps his contributions can be better utilized.