The Psychology Book

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Field theory

BEFORE

Early 1900s Sigmund Freud and other psychotherapists argue that human behavior is a result of past experience.

1910s Wolfgang Köhler, among other Gestalt psychologists, argues that people must be understood holistically, according to all of their elements and their interactions with the surrounding environment.

AFTER

1958 In The Dynamics of Planned Change, Ronald Lippitt, Jeanne Watson, and Bruce Westley create a seven-step change theory that focuses on the role of the change agent rather than on the evolution of change itself.

The behaviorists believed that behavior is dictated by the environment alone, but in the ...