The Lewin legacy

the long version

Kurt Lewin has influenced modern life as fully as John Dewey, Marx, Darwin, or Freud. The ideas and practices of organizational development, life space, leadership styles, force-field analysis, group dynamics, the t-group, feedback, and action research were generated or developed by this humane man and his students, both women and men. On May 3rd and 4th, 1984 at Temple University the first International Kurt Lewin Conference was held. It brought together scholars, professionals and practitioners from the United States and abroad to celebrate Lewin's ideas and work, and to talk about and demonstrate current Lewinian theory and practice. Some local professionals, practitioners and students joined them. This book is a main outcome of the Conference, and represents most of the presenters, unified by their lively common interest. A number of the original papers have been reduced to their present size for the sake of the book's clarity and coherence.