attending the University of Berlin he spent a year at the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh, an experience that perhaps made his later deci-
sion to leave Germany to live in the United States less difficult
than it was for some of his colleagues. He attended the University
of Berlin from 1904 to 1908, when he received his Ph.D. in psy-
chology. A series of academic appointments followed. In 1910 he
was at Frankfort and there began the close association with Wert-
heimer and Köhler. From 1911 until 1924 he was at the Univer-
sity of Giessen. During World War I, he was associated with a
clinic at Giessen that treated aphasia as well as other varieties of
intracranial pathology.

In 1924 Koffka came to the United States and, after 1927, was
associated with Smith College until his death in 1941 at the age of
fifty-five. He published his most important book, The Principles of
Gestalt Psychology, in 1935, about the mid-point of the correspon-
dence contained in this volume.

Molly Harrower was born in 1906 in South Africa of Scottish
parents and grew up and was educated in England. She came to
the United States in 1928 on a fellowship to be assistant to Koffka
at the newly established Gestalt research laboratory at Smith
College. She received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from
Smith College in 1934.

During the years covered by the letters she became a widely re-
spected figure in her own right, an expert on projective tech-
niques. Particularly pertinent to the development of the corre-
spondence was the Rockefeller Medical Foundation fellowship
that she received in 1937, thereby becoming one of the first exper-
imental psychologists to move into a field now known as neuro-
psychology. This move, in turn, led to Koffka's renewed interest in
the clinical field and his appointment to Oxford in 1939.

Harrower is professor emeritus in the Department of Clinical
Psychology at the University of Florida, where she was recently
awarded an honorary degree.

Both correspondents are remarkably sensitive to the subtleties
of language. Harrower is a published poet and has written on the
use of poetry in psychotherapy. Koffka, using English as a second
language, evidences a sensitivity shared by many who, in coming

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