I have attended quite a few conferences and meetings devoted to the ideas of Kurt Lewin. Among these the 1984 conference at Temple was out standing for its high quality. What made it so successful? Several things. The conference included a stimulating mix of generations. The first generation of women who obtained their Ph. D. 's in psychology in Berlin in the 1920's strike me as a remarkable group. Now in their 80's, they are characterized by enormous vigor and energy. They are still professionally active. Two of them - Tamara Dembo and Maria Rickers Ovsienkina - joined us. Other participants in the Temple conference had been in Iowa in the 1930's and 1940's, or at MIT. Of course there were many who had learned about Lewin from their own teachers, and in some cases, their teachers' teachers. There was a good mixture of ap plied psychologists and academics. Father said on several occasions that he did not want to found a school of psychology as such. Rather he wanted to introduce the field theoretical viewpoint and approach. I think he would have been stimulated by and enthusiastic about the many diverse areas to which Lewinian analy ses, ideas, and concepts are applied today, as illustrated by this volume. He would have been pleased to see so many people applying basic theoreti cal concepts to important social problems. Father loved to discover new things about America.

Heinz Werner (1890-1964) was one of the three key developmental psychologists of the 20th century – along with Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. This book is a new exploration of Werner’s ideas and their social contexts – in Vienna in his student years, in Hamburg up to 1933, followed by the years of transit as an immigrant to America at times of economic depression, finally culminating in his establishment of the prominent "Clark tradition" in American psychology in the 1950s. The book offers an in-depth analysis of Werner’s ideas as they were originally formulated in Vienna and Hamburg, and how they were changed by North American influences. Werner’s pivotal role between European and American intellectual traditions is illuminated through the use of rich memories of his former students, unique documents from Werner’s personal library at Clark, and analyses of links with other European traditions in philosophy and biological sciences. The European period (prior to 1933) in Werner’s academic life is found to be definitive for Werner’s contributions to science. The ideas developed in his early career continued in the form of a productive empirical research program in the 1950s at Clark. An analysis of the social-intellectual climate of the development of psychology in America in the 1950s is a special feature of this book that will further enhance an understanding of Werner’s unique contribution This book will be of interest to developmental psychologists, sociologists and historians of science, philosophers, practitioners working in special education and neuropsychology, and for general readers interested in the history of ideas and life courses of scientists.