[The psychological dynamics of Kurt Lewin. The problem of the relation between mechanics and phenomenology].

Abstract

By reviewing especially Lewin's researches from his German period - which are important insofar as they exhibit the epistemological grounds of his whole work, as well as his fundamental insights into the "structure of mind" - the Author points out a series of difficulties inherent in Lewin's original approach. Such difficulties also explain why Lewin's grandiose program to develop a scientific psychology, more mathematico-galilaeiano, was after his time abandoned. Indeed, if on the one hand a rereading of Lewin's epistemology reveals the unexpected debt he pays to the mechanical model of thought, yet, on the other hand, a careful analysis of his notion of "field," otherwise fruitful, shows that he can neither consistently exploit his phenomenological view of the field as a "space of life," nor adequately deal with the human subject by the mere experimental method. As a matter of fact, the brave effort to join the two patterns together - the phenomenological and the experimental-objectivistic-mathematical one - produces a basic ambiguity, owing not so much to Lewin's limitations as to the epochal clash between two patterns that are actual gnoseological and methodological archetypes. Nevertheless, some weakness in Lewin's "dynamic" approach does not seem by itself to prejudge his later social psychology; rather, also in the light of recent historiography, the question of the link between these different moments of his work should be reconsidered.